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Digitized by the Internet Archive 
in 2011 with funding from 
The Library of Congress 



http://www.archive.org/details/howtostudyOOwell 



How to Study 



The ^^How" Series 



By Amos R. Wells 

How to Play 
How to Work 
How to Study 



How to Study 



By AMOS R. WELLS 



^rwrm 




United Society of Christian Endeavor 
Boston and Chicago 



56414 



)-ibr».i }f «t Con«»r«N« 


■*\At Cu»'»tt ((ta««co 


OCT 4 1900 


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S£C01ilO COf V. 


0^«We««rf(n 


OROei? DIVISION, 


OCT 18 1900 



LBI007 



Copyright, 1900, 

by the 

United Society of Christian Endeavor 



.\\ 



CONTENTS 



CHAP. 




PAGE 


I. 


Folks That Have Graduated . 


7 


II. 


The Books on the Subject 


II 


III. 


The Good of Pencil-Tablets 


i6 


IV. 


How TO " Take " Lectures . 


23 


V. 


Cram . . . . 


31 


VI. 


Per Centum . - . 


40 


VII. 


Conquering the Examination Bugbear, 


, 46 


VIII. 


Studying on Business Principles 


50 


IX. 


Midnight Oil . . . ■■ . 


54 


X. 


Wasting Brains .... 


58 


XL 


What Is Under Your Head ? 


62 


XII. 


The Lesson Simpson Learned . 


65 


XIII. 


The Ethics of Quotation Marks . 


69 


XIV. 


How Scholars May Improve Their 






Teachers ..... 


75 


XV. 


Put Your Play into Your Work . 


83 


XVI. 


Get One Day's Work Ahead 


86 


XVII. 


Absorbing Information . 


89 


KYIll. 


Putting One's Mind on It - . 


95 


XIX. 


Memory-Training .... 


103 



^■^ 



CONTENTS. 

PAGE 

. 107 

III 



XX. Coin of the Realm . 
XXI. My ''Ever-Ready" 
XXII. The Finishing Touch 

XXIII. The Clue in the Labyrinth 

XXIV. Why Are You Studying? 



127 



HOW TO STUDY, 




CHAPTER I. 

FOLKS THAT HAVE GRADUATED. 

O you know what the word "gradu- 
ate " has come to mean ? Ask a 
fond father, whose son has just re- 
ceived a diploma from high school, 
academy, or college, what the word ''gradu- 
ate " signifies and he will say, " Why, he's 
through ! " Through ! As if education were 
a Great Dismal Swamp, and the lad had just 
scrambled out to firm land again ! 

A far different idea lies hidden in the noble 
word, " graduate," — an idea of the vast hill of 
learning, broadl}^ based on the common world 
of everyday things, and rising by fair terrace 
after fair terrace, until it reaches that golden 
cloud which hides from mortal eyes the throne 
of God ! To " graduate," to receive a " de- 
gree," is to ascend only one step toward the 
summit. There are many grades up to which 
7 



8 HOW TO STUDY. 

we must graduate. It is a hill of manj^ de- 
grees, this hill of learning ; and what are we 
to think of people who say of a graduate, 
" He's through " ? 

Of course I do not know how many novels 
you have read ; but you are aware that before 
the last page of the novel the heroine is very 
likely to say, " Oh, Orlando ! You can never 
have loved me at all, or else you would love 
me forever." The heroine may be right : she 
probably is ; but, at any rate, this lover's sen- 
timent is true for the student. It may be said 
safely that, with few exceptions, the man or 
the woman who has ceased studying has never 
really studied at all. O, I suppose there may 
be backsliders among students as well as among 
Christians ; and yet, as I would suspect the 
genuineness of the original conversion of a 
backslider from Christianity, so I have my 
serious doubts whether a man who is not still 
a student ever was a student. 

I hope you do not consider this comparison 
an irreverent one. I assure you that it is very 
far from that. To the true student, study has 
much of the sacredness of religion. He enters 
a library with as much awe as if it were a 
cathedral. He feels himself called to study 
just as really as ever a preacher was called to 
preach. He enters upon his work with as true 



FOLKS THAT HAVE GRADUATED. 9 

a consecration as any bishop's. A human 
mind that has once felt the rush of -solemn 
pride at first sight of a new truth will always 
be hungry for more moments like that ; and 
the reason why so many graduates are 
" through " is because they have never really 
begun to study and think for themselves. 

Let me ask you a ridiculous question. How 
would you feel if with a magician's wand I 
should suddenly annihilate your body, and 
leave you, my reader, sitting before this book, 
an incorporeal mind ? Would you be perfectly 
comfortable, or would your mind go feeling 
after your body as the soldier's mind gropes 
after his buried limb ? Would you cry out 
for hands to sew with, and for pockets to put 
some money in, and for fingers to clutch the 
money ? Such a transformation is coming 
some day, is it not, to all of us ; but it hardly 
matters to the student. His mind is not afraid 
to be alone. Trained by earnest study, exer- 
cised in wide reading, strengthened by hard 
thinking, his mind, his spirit, has come to 
seem to him what it really is, the only endur- 
ing part of him. 

But these poor people who have graduated, 
and got through with study, and out among 
the dollars and dimes, the stitches and ditches, 
the saws and the ledgers, — what will they, 



10 HOW TO STUDY. 

what will they do on that great Commence- 
ment Day, that commencement of a life of 
spirit, of thought, of study, with dimes, 
stitches, and ledgers left out ? Money can do 
vast good. Brawny arms and deft fingers are 
a nobleman's title. Skill with machinery, 
cleverness at carving, shrewdness in sowing 
wheat — these are well worth strivino- for. 
But on that Commencement Day when we 
must all graduate from the flesh, how pitiable 
will seem the shrewdest millionaire who got 
through studying long ago, beside his poorest 
neighbor whose mind has been taught to 
think, whose heart has been taught to feel ! 




CHAPTEE II. 

THE BOOKS OlS" THE SUBJECT. 

BIBLIOMAl^IAC is a man who, if 
he had to choose between getting 
the ideas in a book and getting the 
book itself, would say, " Give me the 
book." This is silly enough, but, on the con- 
trary, many original niinds have been spoiled 
because their owners have not, before begin- 
ning their studies, gathered the books on the 
subject. 

Some people are so bent on being original 
that they hardly dare look into a book. 'Not 
being instructed in other men's work, they are 
continually cackling over ideas that other 
brains have hatched out long ago, and stum- 
bling at obstructions that every one else knows 
how to get around. They think that original- 
ity consists in doing things themselves, whereas 
it really consists in doing things that no one 
else has done for us. The wise student, seeiug 
the infinity of matters to be learned, is only 
too glad to study all he can by proxy. He 
reads greedily the books on the subject. 
11 



12 HOW TO STUDY. 

I well remember the boys of several arith- 
metics in the public schools — bright fellows 
who would come to me at recess or noonings 
with " sums " from Greenleaf or other old-time 
text-books fished out from the attic. I well 
remember the boj^s of several geologies at col- 
lege, whose recitations showed them as famil- 
iar with Dana and Winchell and Geikie and 
Lyell as with Le Conte. I remember these 
young fellows because they are making their 
mark now in the world. They are well-read 
lawyers, doctors of more than one prescrip- 
tion, teachers who hold life-certificates, farm- 
ers who can raise more than one cereal. 

Students forget that they are studying text- 
hooks only. They make their one text-book 
the whole sermon. To be sure, an old maxim 
bids us beware of the man of one book. He 
will be so thoroughly familiar with it, the idea 
is, that he will be an ugly customer to meet in 
an argument. But that maxim is false, like so 
many others. The truth is, that you never 
can know one book until you have become ac- 
quainted with many, on the same subject. 
The other books, with their new ways of put- 
ting things, will be sure to change your opin- 
ion of the first book. 

Besides, reading the new book will add to 
your wisdom, even if it contains nothing new. 



THE BOOKS ON THE SUBJECT. 13 

Indeed, you should read new books on an old 
subject more to gain the old facts and ideas, 
than new ones. Do you know how facts be- 
come friends? In the same way as people. 
Friendship with a man springs, not from one 
meeting, but from frequent contact, in streets, 
shops, churches, crowds, and alone. Facts and 
ideas also become our friends only as we meet 
them in different kinds of type, strange covers, 
new garbs of language, and at unexpected 
times. 

Of course I do not^ mean that you are to 
read with equal thoroughness everything you 
can find on the subject, whether it be weighty 
or. trivial. Part of the advantage of the habit 
I am advocating is the sense it will give you 
of proportionate values, and the drill it will 
give you in the sublime art of skimming. 
Often the knowledge of where certain facts 
are to be found is all you can carry away from 
the reading of a book on your subject ; this 
knowledge, however, is no mean acquisition. 

" But," some one may ask, " after all this 
parallel reading will not my mind be too sated 
for any original work ? " No. Most minds 
are like those old-time pumps into which you 
must pour water to start them. To me a row 
of authorities with whom I have been hobnob- 
bing on a matter is tremendous inspiration to 



14 HOW TO STUDY, 

go to work and do something worthy of the 
company I have been in. It is a great blun- 
der to suppose that any head can be too full 
for originality. 

I hear, too, the wail of the lazy man : " Oh, 
the time, and oh, the trouble, to lift about 
tiiese huge atlases, encyclopaedias, dictionaries, 
and gazetteers!" I have nothing to say to 
you. Master Wilted, except that everything 
good is made of time and trouble. But indeed 
you will find, if you make the experiment, that 
after reading one book on any subject it is 
twice as easy to read the second, four times as 
easy to read the third, and sixty-four times as 
easy to read the seventh. 

Still one more objector, and this time it is 
Master Economy. "What!" he cries, "buy 
three text-books instead of one, and whenever 
I travel anywhere, or go a-fishing, or buy a 
horse, or invest in a mortgage, I must pur- 
chase volumes on these subjects?" No, Mas- 
ter Economy, I did not say that ; and do not 
need to, in these days of free libraries. A 
standard encyclopaedia should be yours, and 
will give you riches of suggestion. So will 
dictionaries, those fascinating tomes. Besides, 
nowadays books are so cheap that we are 
almost hired to take them off the dealer's 
hands; and these cheap books are not cheap 



THE BOOKS ON THE SUBJECT. 15 

in quality, but standard works in all depart- 
ments of literature. And if you lack all these 
resources, then remember that it is no disgrace 
to borrow, provided you return uninjured what 
you borrow. The places are few in these 
United States where any one may not get full, 
overflowing information on almost any sub- 
ject, if he will but reach out after it. 

Have you ever made rock candy ? You take 
the hot water and stir in sugar until the liquid 
is saturated. Then you hang a string in the 
middle, and let the liquid cool. Come back 
the next day, and you have a mass of most 
beautiful crystals clustered about the string. 
One of the most fruitful methods of studying 
is precisely this of saturating your mind with 
facts and thoughts, and then letting down a 
string and fishing for crystals. 




CHAPTEE III. 

THE GOOD OF PENCIL-TABLETS. 

HATEYER books the student may 
have, there is one book which he 
must use in studying any subject: 
that is the pencil-tablet. It is not 
many years, I think, since some Yankee hero, 
who should be honored with a lofty monu- 
ment, conceived the beneficent idea of fasten- 
ing loose sheets of paper together with glue, 
giving them a pasteboard stiffening, and send- 
ing them forth to dwell at the right hand of 
every scholar. No arithmetician can calculate 
how much this little rough-and-ready contriv- 
ance has helped the student world. Pencil- 
tablets have taught brain-workers the close 
connection between lead-pencils and knowl- 
edge. They have shown us how easily and 
rapidly the littles grow to the "mickle "when 
there is a place for their ready reception and 
accuuTulation. In fact, pencil-tablets are the 
savings-banks of thought. 

Do you know the easiest, swiftest, and most 
thorough way of studying almost any lesson ? 

16 



THE GOOD OF PENCIL-TABLETS. 17 

It is this. Sit down with text-book and tab- 
let, and proceed to report the lesson. You 
know what the reporter does, — all but the few 
who make verbatim reports ; he gets the facts 
in the case. As bulldog to the throat of growl- 
ing bulldog, so directly does he grip the vital 
points of a matter,j*ot them down, and let the 
others go. Your genuine reporter can sum 
up a page in a sentence, and a sentence in a 
word. 

]^ow this reportorial knack is hard to ac- 
quire, but of the greatest value to the student. 
It is of value for four reasons. In the first 
place, for the student, as well as for the re- 
porter, it is absolutely essential to get at any 
rate the gist of things. The gist of things is 
the skeleton on which they hang ; it is what 
gives backbone, solidity, to facts and ideas. 
A student who does not know how to take 
notes will read an entire paragraph with anx- 
ious attention to its details, and miss utterly 
the one fact or thought to present which the 
paragraph w^as written, about which the para- 
graph hangs. The reportorial student will re- 
member more details than the other will, but 
he will do it by consciously remembering only 
the nuclear notion, and letting that draw all 
its dependencies with it. Set an unskilled 
man to sketch a pu]3py, and he will painfully 



18 now TO STUDY. 

insert every curl, every dark spot, every swell- 
ing- of every muscle ; and then he will not 
have the puppy, but only a splotch on the 
paj)er. Now comes the shrewd artist, and 
curves his pencil easily about, once or twice, 
making a few sharp strokes between, and a 
genuine, live puppy fairly barks from the 
paper and wags his tail. That is how this 
note-taking method of studying lessons helps 
the student : it enables him to draw a living 
outline of the lesson's truths. 

Indeed, a set of well-taken notes on a sub- 
ject ought to be very much like a picture. A 
picture differs from a written description, you 
know, in its power of flashing the scene upon 
you as a whole, not by a slow succession of 
touches. If you will make your notes very 
brief, — mere suggestive words and phrases, — 
and if you will write them almost in the fashion 
of a diagram, with underscorings showing to 
the eye the portions of leading importance; 
and if you will write in a small, compact, and 
exceedingly plain script, then your page of 
notes will be a half-picture of the lesson, and 
will dwell in your memory much as a picture 
does. 

Besides, the mere act of writing is a marvel- 
ous assistant to the memory. It is a general 
principle tliat anything is better remembered 



THE GOOD OF PENCIL-TABLETS. 19 

if you can associate some act with it. Pos- 
sibly that is why in the Middle Ages they 
whipped boys to make them remember their 
lessons. A very little energy of the body 
often saves much labor of the mind, and even 
mechanical copying of the lesson would be of 
great assistance in learning it. 

But this vividness of mental impression to 
which all writing contributes is vastly in- 
creased in value by judicious note-taking, be- 
cause of the sense of proportion which this 
condensation cultivates. The blind man, with 
his vision half restored, saw "men as trees 
walking " ; and many a student never passes 
this stage of mental vision. He sees mole- 
hills as mountains, and mountains as mole- 
hills ; he sees fundamentals as incidentals, and 
mere by-the-ways as essentials. Brief notes, 
condensed upon a single sheet of paper, show 
us the subject spread out before us in its true re- 
lations and proportions, like a bird's-eye view 
from a balloon. 

When you would master a lesson, then, take 
careful, wise notes upon it, as if you were re- 
porting an address. This, at first, will be 
slower than the ordinary method, but a little 
practice will marvelously shorten the time ; 
and, from the start, the time will really be 
shorter on the whole, because of the perma- 



20 UOJV TO STUDY. 

nence of your grasp of your knowledge. Most 
of our modem text-books facilitate and sug- 
gest this method of study, by printing in 
heavy type a brief statement of its subject- 
matter at the beginning of every paragraph. 

Yet these notes will be nothing but a well- 
drawn sketch, after all, unless you think them 
over. A review will transform them into a 
completed picture. As you read over your 
page of notes for the first time, some words 
will fail to suggest thoughts, some figures will 
fail to suggest facts, and you must go back to 
the original again. Keep this up, doing it 
many times, if necessary, until every word and 
phrase of your skeleton outline has been 
clothed with the flesh of a vivid conception. 
Then your lesson is mastered. 

A volume might be written on the relation 
between pencil-tablets and wisdom. Let me 
content myself with a few additional hints. 

Pencil-tablets can make essay-writing a de- 
light. My first step, when I w^ish to write an 
essay, is to arm myself with a tablet which fits 
the pocket. Then comes the campaign for 
notions. On the street, about my work, from 
conversations with friends, on solitary walks, 
in church, Sunday-school, or lecture-room, — 
everywhere, hints on my chosen topic are fly- 
ing around, and my tablet is the net which 



THE GOOD OF PENCIL-TABLETS. 21 

snares them. It is astonishing, as is often re- 
marked, how full the world is of thoughts for 
any one who is prepared to think them. You 
know, do you not, what the wise men have 
learned about consmnption? They have dis- 
covered that it is caused by an ugly little — 
Avondrously little — plant, which floats about 
in the air, and is always ready to settle down 
and set up its poisonous growth in any body 
which by special weakness is made ready to 
contract the disease. In just that way men 
can contract ideas,^by getting ready for 
them. Therefore, carry a pencil-tablet. After 
the tablet has caught its load of ideas, the 
essay is virtually written. You have only to 
sort the ideas and dress them. 

It is well to have many of these tablets ; as, 
one for queries, such as words about whose 
meaning, spelling, or pronunciation we are un- 
certain ; one for points to be incorporated in 
letters to friends, thus saving time on a second 
letter after the first is written ; one for essay- 
themes and notions ; one for facts in regard to 
your studies. And it is well, too, to have 
these many books in many places, especially 
if you have not a boy's proud plethora of 
pockets. Nothing is sadder than the condition 
of a man who revels in notes, when he gets an 
idea and has nothing whereon to set it down. 



22 HOW TO STUDY. 

And, for a final point in regard to this mat- 
ter, what shall we do with our old notes ? In 
most cases, throw them away. Their mission 
was ended in the making. Though, of course, 
if they are notes of reading, of any matter not 
readily accessible in other form, they must 
either be written out in full or pasted in some 
book for reference. ''When found, make a 
note on," said dear old Captain Cuttle. In all 
but especially valuable cases, good student 
philosophy would dictate : " When found, and 
made a note on, proceed to lose the note ! " 



CHAPTER lY. 




HERE was once a young farmer who 
planted corn in stiff clay. He did 
not plough the soil before planting, 
nor did he hoe it when the few 
blades appeared, and yet he grumbled because 
he got no harvest. A foolish young farmer, 
wasn't he ? 

But if he was foolish, what are we to think 
of the silliness of those who complain that they 
never can remember lectures, or sermons, who 
in the same manner never prepare the mental 
soil for the listening nor go over it again for 
the remembering ? Equally foolish, are they 
not? 

Yet how many such we have all seen ! 
They go out to hear the renowned Professor 
Bigbrain speak on Toussaint 1' Ouverture. 
They bring to the lecture a mind which is ab- 
solutely virgin soil. Toussaint may have been 
a monk of the Middle Ages, or a Texas cow- 
boy, or a French explorer, for all they know. 

When the professor begins to recite that 

23 



24 BO IV TO STUDY. 

most romantic story, they are at once plunged 
into a perplexing sea of uncertainties. '' Just 
where is St. Domingo ? Is it one of the East 
or the West Indies ? And why does Professor 
Bigbrain talk about the French and Spanish 
and the British and the negroes, all in the 
same breath ? But there ! He mentioned 
Cape Town. It must all be in South Africa ! 
And there comes in Napoleon Bonaparte. 
This can't be in the Middle Ages, then ! " 

Do you wonder that on the way home they 
draw a long breath and say, " Ah ! That was 
fine ! What a hero he was ! But I'll not re- 
member it a month " ? Ten minutes' work 
with history, atlas ^nd encyclopaedia before 
they started would have put them in condition 
to receive the whole. 

It wouldn't be so bad, however, if, with the 
impulse Professor Bigbrain has given them, 
they should go directly home and read over 
again Toussaint's marvelous career. That 
would be hoeing the corn when it has sprung 
up. But how many thus review and make 
permanent a public address ? 

Many wise preachers announce their themes 
beforehand, in pulpit or press. How many 
take advantage of this opportunity for a little 
preparatory plowing, and thus double the 
" fold " with which the good seed springs up ? 



EOW TO ''TAKE'' LECTURES. 25 

And in how many homes is the capital old 
custom extant, which gathered the household 
after service, to rehearse, with the aid of their 
united memories, the entire sermon ? 

You all know the story of the poor washer- 
woman who, being forced by her pastor to ac- 
knowledge that she always forgot both text 
and sermon, caught up a cleaned cloth from the 
grass and showed the clerical gentleman how it 
had forgotten all the water which had passed 
through it, but yet was whiter and purer by 
the operation. The ingenious old lady forgot 
that every flood of true oratory bears gold 
dust with it, and the very cloth she snatched 
up had been so worn by the ceaseless passage 
of water, that every particle of gold passed 
through its pores ! 

JS'ow most students go to college with none of 
this drill in the mastery of addresses, though 
wise parents and teachers might easily have 
given it to them, and they plunge unprepared 
into a system of education which more and 
more is based upon the lecture. J^ote-taking 
is an art not to be picked up in a moment ; it 
needs a long apprenticeship ; and it is amazing 
and pitiable to see how little a college student 
will often bring away from an hour's well 
digested and well presented discourse. 

The value of shorthand to a student is in- 



26 HOW TO STUDY. 

estimable. It will save him every month, 
hours of time spent otherwise in laborious 
copying. It will enable him to make a full 
and increasingly valuable record of his reading. 
It will give his fingers power to keep pace with 
his mind when it is at its best, so that he will 
not lose one idea for his essay while setting 
down another. On his walks, and in the course 
of conversation, his shorthand notebook will 
receive many a fleeting impression that other- 
wise would escape him. The day is coming 
when every boy and girl will be taught short- 
hand just as now we teach longhand. 

But it is in taking notes of lectures that 
stenography shines most glorious. Three or 
four times as much knowledge may be gained 
from a course of lectures by a student thus 
equipped as he would obtain by the use of the 
clumsy longhand, and he will get it with four 
times the ease and pleasure. If he has not 
learned the "art beautiful," as its devotees 
fondly call it, let him begin at the entrance of 
his college course, and work in the shorthand 
characters as fast as he learns them. As soon 
as he has taught himself to make a dot on the 
line to represent " and," he has saved himself 
twelve strokes for every "and " he uses. The 
gain is immediate and surprising, and con- 
stantly growing. Some scholars fashion for 



EOW TO ''TAKE'' LECTURES. 27 

themselves a system of short longhand, writing 
" wh " for " which," " t " for " the," and the 
like. This is advantageous, but what is the 
use of building a push-cart when you might as 
well have an automobile ? 

This may suffice as to the mechanics of note- 
taking, though I have found it not amiss in my 
classes to recommend the use of soft, easily 
working lead-pencils and paper with a rough 
surface, small notebooks readily slipped into 
the pocket, and more than one pencil, each 
with a point already ,made ! So ignorant of 
note-taking is the average student that these 
little hints are never superfluous. ]N^ow a word 
upon the mental side of the operation. 

In the first place, go to the lecture with an 
alert mind. A good listener is not a dull, 
empty bucket into which information is poured 
till it overflows. Such a mind will always 
leak and will never overflow. Proper listening 
is analogous, rather, to "fielding" in base- 
ball. There is your man at the bat ready to 
send a scorcher right down the centre, and 
there is the short-stop, and there are all the 
fielders with their backs bent forward, their 
hands extended, their legs tense, their eyes 
snapping, every nerve and every muscle just 
aching for that ball. And when the crack is 
heard, and the lovely leather sphere rises into 



28 HOW TO STUDY. 

the air— "A fly! A good ^j \''—h\g\iQv, 
higher, and then swiftly curves down into two 
triumphant hands — ah, that is the way to 
" take " a lecture ! How quickly a teacher re- 
sponds to such baseball minds, and how quickly 
they respond to the teacher, how " hot " the 
game becomes some times, and what a score 
is made ! 

I have already said enough upon the second 
necessity for successful note-taking, namely, 
some previous know^ledge of the subject, gained 
from reading. Eead enough to put yourself in 
the questioning attitude. Get a few queries 
started in your mind. Excite your own cu- 
riosity. Eead to the point of saying, " Well, 
this is interesting; I'd like to know more 
about it." Then you will know more about it, 
for food scarcely feeds until it is eaten with 
an appetite. 

Do not be so intent on your note-taking that 
the process diverts your mind from the pro- 
fessor. The baseball player is not thinking about 
the position of his hands, he is thinking only 
of the ball he is catching. If he thought about 
his muscles and his attitude, he would not 
catch the ball. Note-taking must become 
automatic, instinctive. 

To this end, your notes must be very brief, 
mere hints, a dash of paint here, a dash there. 



sow TO ''TAKE'' LECTURES. 29 

much as an impressionist painter slashes his 
colors upon the canvas. It looks like a view 
of Pandemonium until you stand at a distance, 
when it flashes into a bewitching landscape. 
And that is what your notes are for — to read 
well at a distance. 

The rule is, " Leave out all you can." The 
amateur laboriously sets down everything — or 
tries to. Obvious inferences, unimportant side- 
remarks, illustrations that could not be for- 
gotten if one tried, elementary facts familiar 
to him from boyhood — all plod into their 
stupid place in his notebook. Moreover, he 
must get the exact wording, and while he is 
counting the buttons on the coat of the idea, 
the idea itself has slipped away, leaving an 
empty garment. To change the figure, these 
blundering note-takers obtain only the skeleton 
of the lecture. Every bone is there, properly 
articulated, it may be; but there is no life, 
there is nothing but dead bones. And to that 
valley of dry bones no Ezekiel's miracle is 
ever vouchsafed. 

Much of the value of note-taking depends 
upon the prompt writing out of notes before 
they " grow cold." Some lazy wights have 
the abominable practice of transcribing their 
week's notes all on a day — the last possible 
day, of course, and get as much good from the 



30 BOW TO STUDY. 

operation as they would if they applied the 
same plan to the eating of their week's din- 
ners. Contrive your work, if possible — and it 
will be possible more often than you think — so 
that not an hour shall intervene between the 
hearing of the lecture and the writing out of 
your impressions. You will then have added 
to your mental retinue not a mummy but a 
live, vigorous servant. 

It is an advantage also in writing out 3^our 
notes to attempt to imitate your instructor's 
manner as well as record his matter, to catch 
his spirit as well as his facts. Become. dra- 
matic; infuse into your task, which so readily 
becomes monotonous, a little of the histrionic 
fire ; imagine yourself, as you write out your 
notes, to be your professor teaching that 
lesson, and you will be that professor, more or 
less, and you will gradually add no small part 
of his personality to your own, Avhich is as 
much finer than the mere collection of certain 
facts as a man is more than a date. 




CHAPTEE y. 

CKAM. 

HEEE are two kinds of springs in the 
world. One is the everyday, hum- 
drum affair you are all familiar with, 
— plodding along, day after day, 
winter and summer, at just so many gallons a 
minute. The other is that aqueous spasm 
known as the geyser. It is stagnant for hours ; 
then come rumblings and gruntings as if the 
water was very loth to disturb itself ; and 
then the geyser, with roar and brilliant play 
of jets, shoots high into the air a gorgeous 
column. For all its fuss, however^ I fancy 
that the geyser is worth much less to the world 
than the most modest, humdrum spring. 

And so there are plodding hillside-spring 
students, just the same day after day ; and 
there are geyser students, chiefly stagnant, 
with an occasional explosion of fussy work. 
These latter students are said to " cram." 

]^ow this word, " cram," is by a metaphor 
carried from the stomach to the head ; and I 
wish it were considered as vulgar, as it cer- 

31 



32 HOW TO STUDY. 

tainly is as mischievous, to cram the head as 
the stomach. Consider what takes place at a 
railway station to which has just come an ex- 
cursion with a cargo of trunks twice too large 
for the rooms and the force of men. There is 
impatient running here and there, loud shouts 
and bad language, jamming, stumbling, top- 
pling over, trunks on top of valises or smash- 
ing into each other, everything in disorder, 
everybody anxious and angry and fussy. Just 
this thing occurs when we try to shovel into 
the brain a double quantity of facts or ideas. 
The blood runs frantically here and there, the 
ganglia shout and the convolutions use bad 
language, big facts are piled on top of little 
facts and ideas are jammed into each other, 
everything is in disorder, and the S23irit is anx- 
ious and confused. 

The chief reason — aside from laziness — why 
so many students think that they can atone 
for long periods of study-indolence by occa- 
sional spurts of abnormal mental activity is be- 
cause they do not consider the time-factor in 
education. They cannot see why six hours' 
study on one day is not exactly equivalent to 
one hour's study on each of six days. I am 
sure that I should help the average scholar im- 
mensely if I could teach him the power of the 
pause. Let me attempt to give you the 



CEAM. 33 

reasons why we students must say, " SuiRcient 
unto the day is the study thereof," and also, 
" Give us day by day our daily lessons." 

In the first place, it is because green facts, 
like green wood, take time to season. You 
know what would happen if you should put 
unseasoned timber into a house. You can 
fancy the warped sides, the swayed beams, the 
doors that would not open and the windows that 
would not close. Why, even sandstone, when 
taken from the quarry, must lie a few months 
to season, before builders venture to use it. 

Thinkers recognize a like peculiarity in facts 
and thoughts. Let them lie for a few days or 
weeks on the edge of the thought-quarry, turn 
them over on review day, and then on a second 
review day organize a grand building-bee, and 
send up your temple of knowledge a few 
inches higher with material that will not warp. 

In the second place, cramming is a vicious 
method of study because of necessity it omits 
the incidentals. You know how full the 
heavens are of shooting stars, — so full that 
scarcely an hour passes during which some are 
not to be seen, and at certain times the sky is 
ablaze with them. The way to count them 
is to place four people back to back, facing the 
four quarters of the sky. Some one will then 
see every meteor. 



34 HOW TO STUDY. 

But what if some impatient astronomer 
should seek a quicker method, arguing thus : 
" If four persons in one hour see sixteen mete- 
ors, then if I station one hundred people in my 
field, they will see in the same hour four hun- 
dred meteors." You w^ould laugh at him. 
But you should laugh as heartily at the stu- 
dent who thinks he can in three weeks' con- 
tinuous study get the same grasp on a subject 
which the same study would give him, scat- 
tered over three months. To a person who 
has his mind on the watch for thoughts on 
a subject the world is as full of ideas, hints, 
suggestions, as the sky is full of shooting stars 
to a man who looks for them ; but these hints 
from books, newspapers, addresses, conversa- 
tions, private thought, may be expected only 
so often, and any process of cramming will 
miss the larger part of them. The true stu- 
dent alone knows how great this loss is. 

The third reason why cramming will not do 
the work of continuous study is because it de- 
stroys the sense of leisure. Mental digestion 
as well as physical is ruined by the " ten-min- 
utes-for-refreshment " plan. Nothing that is 
permanent grows in a hurry. " Why, see that 
new building ! " you cry. " It is to outlast the 
pyramids in its immense grandeur, and it has 
risen as if by magic under the skilled hands of 



CBABI. 35 

our Yankee mechanics." I know it. They 
put up the building in two years. But I fancy 
that if the stone they used, the iron and the 
timber, had been constructed by nature in only 
two years, that building would fall more 
promptly than it rose. Nature never crams. 
Let the student who thinks he can study by 
jerks take a dose of geology to purge his mind 
and another of astronomy to strengthen it. The 
quiet, slow reaches of God's studies — studies 
in world-making, in system-building — ought to 
teach us hysterical students a healthful lesson. 
No great poem was ever written to order, 
"while you wait." You cannot "cram" in 
essay-writing. When you do, it becomes 
"hack- writing," limping and forlorn as those 
melancholy vehicles after which it is named, 
Necessity may be the mother of invention, for 
invention works only with the materials at 
hand ; but leisure is the mother of creation, 
and the work of the true scholar is always 
creative. 

The fourth reason why cramming ruins the 
student is because it destroys individuality. 
Machines can be crammed. Your printing- 
press will turn off a few thousand copies more 
an hour without inconvenience ; your telegraph 
is perfectly willing to clatter with double 
rapidity. And cramming is successful with 



36 HOW TO STUDY. 

human beings precisely as they lower them- 
selves to the character of machines. The proc- 
ess of cramming is for all alike. It consists 
in text-book gorging. No chance for the 
development of one's originality or inventiTe- 
ness ; no chance for the side excursions which 
are often worth more than the main trip. I 
know a wise lady who took her daughters out 
of school one year, partly for a rest, and partly 
to give them a chance to do especially thor- 
ough work in American history, so that they 
might be able to visit long and intelligently the 
Columbian Exposition. Who will say that 
that was not a capital plan ? And yet those 
girls were not advanced by it one step nearer 
a diploma ; and, looked at from the side of 
" cram," all such original ideas are needless 
absurdities. 

Some, however, who would not at first sight 
seem to be advocating cramming, say that if 
one thing alone is studied, a short time spent 
in intense study on that is equal to a much 
longer time when the mind is distracted with 
other subjects. This is the argument used 
by many authors of " six-week methods " or 
"courses" in Latin, German, geology, and 
what not. The men who urge these short 
cuts, these royal roads, to knowledge, forget 
that people can study three things as easily as 



CEAM. 37 

one. You have observed how quickly you 
tire on the level city pavements, whereas you 
could walk miles without wearying on the ups 
and downs of a country road. Variety of 
studies, in like manner, brings in different sets 
of mental muscles, and rests the whole. 

Let us not forget, students, that the times 
when the mind is doing nothing but digesting 
the things already learned are not periods of 
lazy inactivity, any more than the like diges- 
tive periods of the stomach, but times of the 
most intense and nece&sary activity. The old 
Jesuit teachers were right in spending six 
months of the year in reviewing what they 
had taught during the preceding six months. 
What is soon won is soon lost. You cannot 
force intellectual growth under the blue glass, 
after the fashion of the craze of a few years 
ago. Eemember the principle of the pulley : 
what you lose in time you gain in power. 
Cram educates nothing — nothing, that is, but 
groundless conceit and short-lived effrontery. 
Study as the locomotive fireman puts in coal, 
— not half a ton at a time, not at long inter- 
vals, poking up the fire to make it burn fiercely 
and then letting it die away. Watch how he 
does it, flinging open the door every half-min- 
ute, carefully placing three shovelfuls where 
they will do the most good, spreading the fuel 



38 HOW TO. STUDY. 

over the whole surface, so that the same steam- 
pressure is evenly maintained. After that 
fashion do your studying. 

And what if it is the teacher who wants you 
to cram ? In that case, do what the locomo- 
tive would do if treated in such a foolish way : 
object ; explode ! 

An incident from actual life that came un- 
der my notice tempts me to close this chapter 
with a change from the comparison I have 
just drawn. 

In New York City once M. Cliquot, a 
French-Canadian sword-swallower, as a test, 
in the presence of a physician, swallowed four- 
teen swords, whose blades were about an inch 
wide. The physician was told to draw out the 
swords to satisfy himself of the reality of the 
exhibition, and instead of drawing them out 
one by one, through a mistake drew them all 
out together. He cut the man severely, and 
caused him to faint. The sword-swallower, at 
the time when the newspaper published the 
account, was not expected to live. 

This is rather a grewsome story to draw a 
moral from, but you are likely to remember 
the moral all the better for that. How many 
scholars I have known, of whom this too am- 
bitious sword-swallower is a type ! They 
would swallow a whole book of geometry, 



CEAM. 39 

chapter after chapter of astronomy, an. entire 
oration of Cicero, cramming them all down 
together with the greatest ease. But try 
in an examination to draw out this precious 
information, and there were white faces, and 
sometimes faintings, and always a terrible 
mass of incoherences. These scholars simply 
proved to have swallowed more swords than 
they could give forth. 

And if this is true of school examinations, 
still more is it true of those casual conversa- 
tions which constitute the examinations of 
post-graduate life. With how many all of 
their school-day learning sticks in their throats 
after their schooUdays ! Their brains have been 
crammed full, but they are " too full for utter- 
ance," as after-dinner speakers are wont to say. 

Don't be such fools, my students ! In all 
your study look as carefully to the using of 
your facts as to the storing away of the facts 
themselves. Think as much about the outgiv- 
ing of your lore as about the reception of it. 
In debating societies, in conversation, in the 
recitations of the class-room, in writing both 
for yourself and for others, practice draAving 
the sword of wisdom, even more assiduously 
than you practice the sheathing of it. Thus 
alone can it ever become, for you and for 
others, " the sword of the Lord and of Gideon." 




CHAPTER YL 

PER CENTUM. 

p^_^j]HE real schoolmaster of many a 
scholar is a big ogre called Per 
Centum. No matter who the nom- 
inal teacher may be, for these poor 
students, from beginning to end of the school 
life. Per Centum holds the rod and goads the 
scholar to whatever accomplishment is reached. 
The teacher, if he is worth anything, hates this 
ogre Per Centum from the bottom of his heart. 
He knows that Per Centum does some good, 
but he is sure he does more evil, and the teacher 
would gladly kick him out. Too often, how- 
ever, the tyranny of Per Centum over that 
school and those scholars is too firmly estab- 
lished for successful revolution. 

Per Centum is the demon of examinations; 
and before telling wherein he is vicious, let me 
frankly say wherein he is helpful. Examina- 
tions are valuable in two ways only. They 
serve as reviews and as revelations. The ex- 
amination concisely sums up, if the questions 
are wisely chosen, the work of many days. 

40 



PER CENTU3L 41 

The examination reveals, very vividly, the stu- 
dent's weaknesses to himself. Yery rarely does 
the examination, however, tell the teacher, pro- 
vided again he is a good teacher, anything 
about his scholars' scholarship which he did 
not know before. 

1^0 w if scholars would only use examina- 
tions as they use other helps in their studies, 
— as they use pencils and text-books and re- 
views and regular recitations, — all would be 
well. But Per Centum, Per Centum meddles, 
and poisons the whole. Students soon get to 
studying per centum^ — by the hundred, that 
is ; and not pe7' annorem^ — by love. Exami- 
nations become the goal, and not a means to 
the goal. Scholars treat the standing taken 
on examination as if it were itself the knowl- 
edge, not the mere empty sign of the knowl- 
edge ; and wrap themselves up conceitedly in 
it, much as if a man should throw his new coat 
into the fire, and put on the wrapping-paper 
which came around it. And with this view of 
the matter, it is no wonder that some folks will 
not study at all except with examinations in 
prospect, and some teachers can keep their 
classes at work only by entering into active 
partnership with the big ogre, Per Centum. 

The first mischief this misuse of examina- 
tions does is this : One of the chief advan- 



42 HOW TO STUDY. 

tages of genuine study is that it sets a man on 
his own feet ; it makes him original and inde- 
pendent. But this craven slavery to per cents, 
this constant measuring up against others in- 
stead of against our best selves, is destructive 
of all sound independence. These " honors " 
and "prizes" and "honorable mentions" and 
" rewards of merit " inspire — not ambition to 
stand high, but ambition to stand higher than 
somebody else ; not zeal to excel, to be excel- 
lent, but ambition to surpass, to pass some 
one. And the spirit these things cultivate in 
schools sends out those sad armies of graduates 
whose life consists not merely in eating and 
drinking, — that were bad enough, — but in eat- 
ing and drinking more than their neighbors ; 
in wearing finer clothes, owning bigger houses, 
and holding more important offices. And it is 
just as advantageous for the good scholar as 
for the poor one to be free from this bondage 
to per cents. On a certain set of questions a 
fine student, with a ninety per-cent brain, gets 
eighty per cent ; another student, with a fifty 
per-cent brain, gets sixty per cent. Which of 
the two deserves the more credit? Which 
should be elated, and which depressed ? Yet 
the eighty per cent, which is a disgrace to the 
ninety per-cent fellow, will make him exult 
when he learns of his comrade's sixty per cent ; 



PER CENTUM. 43 

and that comrade's sixty per cent, of which 
he should be proud, will fill him with sorrow 
when he thinks of his friend's eighty per cent. 
Thus it is that it equally behooves poor and 
good students to pay slight regard to these mis- 
leading decimals, and consider only whether 
they have each of them so worked as to win 
that beautiful commendation of the Saviour's : 
"She hath done what she could." 

The second reason why per cents are dan- 
gerous for the scholar to regard earnestly is 
because they furnish a standard for the school 
life which disappears as soon as the student 
passes the portal of his active life. What do 
we hear of per cents after school-days ? What 
does that business man care whether or not his 
bookkeeper was an " honor boy " ? Some of 
the boys whom we remember as standing 
highest on the grade-roll of classes in the past, 
first-rate men as far as per cents could show 
them up, are now counted by the world fourth 
and fifth rate. Their teacher's per cents could 
not estimate kindness, tact, faith, cheerfulness, 
integrity, unselfishness, adaptability, "horse 
sense," and a dozen other qualities which make 
a very prominent figure in the world's great 
grade-book. A scholar runs a vast risk when 
his subservience to school per cents leaves 
these things out of account. 



44 HOW TO STUDY. 

And in the third place, faith in per cents 
is dangerous because no student studies well 
while thinking how well he is studying, any 
more than a girl looks handsome when think- 
ing how handsome she is looking, or an orator 
speaks well while thinking of his eloquence. 
Here comes in the inherent viciousness of 
measuring results rather than conduct. All 
true scholars study with a look ahead on the 
path to be followed, not with looks to this 
side and that and behind on their comrades in 
the pursuit. That is why the word " grade " 
is finer than the word " rank " ; grade implies 
actual elevation in the world of truth ; rank 
implies only advancement among one's fel- 
lows. For the sake, then, of that losing of 
one's self in one's work which is the secret of 
true success, let all students pay slight atten- 
tion to per cents. 

In the fourth place, examinations constitute 
a danger because they direct the student's 
mind away from some of the most important 
qualifications of noble stud\% and force him to 
seek chiefly the characteristics which can find 
expression on paper. The ogre Per Centum 
asks him to consider, " What will be my grade 
in quickness, in smartness, in ready memory, 
in glibness, in easy assurance ? " but it throws 
very slight emphasis on a man's gain in pa- 



PER CENTUM. ^^ 

tience, in conscientiousness, in plodding accu- 
racy, in skilful research. The true student 
ever questions himself, " What is my per cent 
in these f " 

Let it be said emphatically, students, that in 
urging you to dethrone this ogre Per Centum, 
if he has wielded his sceptre over your study- 
ing, I do not ask you to be any more easily 
satisfied with your attainments, any less stern 
critics of your efforts. I merely ask you not 
to be satisfied with false aims. I ask you to 
gain for yourselves that essential power of the 
scholar, the ability to recognize wherein he 
has succeeded and in what his true progress 
consists. A wrong incentive always injures 
more than it helps ; and on the contrary, if 
you study for the best ends, you will find that 
this higher motive will with its own results 
bring also all the results of the lower, and you 
will still get just as large per cents as before. 




CHAPTER YIL 

CONQUERING THE EXAMINATION BUGBEAR. 

UT that is not enough to say about 
these important examinations. It 
is not sufficient to say, '*Do not 
study for per cents." That is nega- 
tive. The examination bugbear is not to be 
conquered so easily. 

It is a bugbear, and a big one. I have seen 
many a student come into my recitation room, 
with his — or her — it .generally was her — face 
as white as this paper on which I am writing, 
the eyes red from weeping, and dark circles 
under them, born of the midnight vigil of the 
night before. And I have watched the grow- 
ing nervousness, and the despairing clutch 
after vanishing facts, and the agonizing break- 
down in a burst of sobs as the poor student 
left the room. I have seen this, I say, more 
than once ; and yet I was as wise and patient 
and sensible a teacher as I knew how to be. 

But, you see, so much depends upon an ex- 
amination, no matter how much weight is 
given to the recitations. It is the climax and 

46 



CONQUERING THE EXAMINATION BUGBEAR. 47 

the test of so much work. It means the 
praise or the scorn of so many. It has so im- 
portant a bearing on future welfare. ISTo 
wonder that a feeble wit or a faint heart 
grows nervous at the very thought of one. It 
is a bugbear indeed, with horrible teeth and 
hairy arms and long claws at the end of them. 

Nevertheless, I believe in examinations, 
kept within bounds and duly balanced by 
other considerations, such as recitations and 
general faithfulness and intelligence. I be- 
lieve in them, because they are inevitable in 
after life, and the student should be trained 
to meet them. The world has a very abrupt 
way of bidding us " stand and deliver " what- 
ever knowledge we possess. All its drafts 
upon us are sight drafts. If our scholarship is 
wanted after commencement day, ten to one 
it is wanted in conversation and when there is 
no opportunity to stop and consult the ency- 
clopgedia or the text-book. The world pro- 
ceeds on the entirely reasonable assumption 
that no one really knows a thing till he can 
tell it, and its examinations are far more fre- 
quent and merciless than those of the harshest 
pedagogue that ever figured out a per cent. 

And so we must in some way conquer the 
bugbear, since we cannot annihilate him. 

There are three ways of disposing of bears. 



48 HOW TO STUDY. 

One of them is by shooting. We can shoot 
the examination bugbear. " Shoot it ! " is a 
slang phrase that signifies (so I am tolcl) indif- 
ference, scorn, contempt. We may shoot the 
bugbear in that way, by learning to despise it, 
by schooling ourselves to be careless of it, by 
entering the examination hall with a swagger, 
and sitting down to the desk with a giggle, 
and writing down the wrong answer with a 
grin. I don't recommend this course. The 
gun is quite certain to kick. 

Then there is the method of trap-setting. We 
may capture the bugbear by guile. We may 
say to ourselves, " In my room I knew all this 
perfectly, and there is no reason why I should 
not know it in this room. Yesterday, when 
nothing depended on it, I told the professor 
everything he wanted to know. To-day, when 
something does depend on it, I am not going 
to be so foolish as to lose m}^ knowledge. I 
will play that I am writing a letter to my 
mother, telling her about these things. What 
is the use of getting ' rattled ' over a matter I 
shall have forgotten all about come this time 
next year ? " 

You may set that sort of trap for the bug- 
bear, baiting it with philosophy, — and very 
good philosophy, too. The only trouble is 
that bears are sharp, especially bugbears. The 



i 



CONQUERING THE EXAMINATION BUGBEAR, 49 

chances are that he won't walk into your trap, 
but instead will walk into you. 

1^0 ; the only course I can recommend to be 
taken with the examination bugbear is to tame 
him. It requires time. You must begin to 
make advances as soon as you begin the study. 
You must get a little better acquainted with 
him every day. You must examine yourself 
rigorously. You must ask yourself all the 
questions you can think of regarding the sub- 
ject, as you proceed in your studies. You must 
get your fellow-students to cross-examine you. 
You must convert your room into a regular 
courtroom, and you must put yourself on the 
witness-stand every night and every morning. 
You must often write out your questions, and 
you must still more often write out your an- 
swers. When you are sicre you know it, you 
must begin another review. Every review 
will clip the bear's claws shorter. 

My word for it, long before A\\q term has 
come to an end, your bugbear will be a very 
tame bear indeed, a dancing-bear that will 
prance into the examination room with you, 
and prance out again, clumsy, to be sure, as 
all bears are, and yet your most obedient serv- 
ant to command. 



CHAPTEK YIII. 

STUDYING ON BUSINESS PKINCIPLES. 




O student will ever be successful who 
does not make a business of study, 
and manage his studying on busi- 
ness principles. Suppose a store is 
to be built. What if the workmen should 
come strolling along, some at six, some at ten, 
some in the afternoon ? What if some forget 
their tools and must go after them ? What if 
some forget what they are to work on, and sit 
idly waiting new directions ? What if a squad 
of them get tired of working in one place and 
begin to put up a store a square or two dis- 
tant ? What if half a dozen of their friends 
come along and chat for an hour ? What if 
their tools are dull or broken, and they must 
suspend operations and put them in order ? 

But what is the use of " supposing " ? These 
things do not happen, you say. 

Yes they do, though ! They happen very 
often when most of us set to work on our 
Temple of Knowledge, in Avhich we are to 
dwell forever. We stroll easily along to-day, 

50 



STUDYING ON BUSINESS PRINCIPLES. 51 

and begin work at 10 A. m. or at 3 p. m. To-mor- 
row we are up before daybreak, and not asleep 
until after midnight. We start to work, and 
find that we do not know what to work at, or 
that we have mislaid our tools. Or we dis- 
like our surroundings, and uneasily shift our 
work to some other place, or our energies to 
some other task. Or a number of friends 
come along and call us from our labors. 

Strange that we students, whose business is 
of the highest, will go about it in such unbusi- 
ness-like ways ! that we will admit into our 
work-shops practices which would be scorned 
in the humblest blacksmith shop in the land ! 
Let me name one or two points of business 
policy which most students need to watch. 

In the first place, sit down to your work 
with your tools about you. There is much 
virtue in a well-arranged set of shelves and 
pigeon-holes. If people's brains are modelled 
after their work-rooms, as I verily believe they 
are, the convolutions of some good people I 
know must be patterned after a crazy-quilt. 
The dictionary is under the sofa. The atlas is 
propping up a rickety shelf. The ink-bottle 
has no stopper, and the pens are all frayed 
out. The encyclopaedia begins with K and- 
ends with F. The blotter is under the lamp 
to catch the drippings, and on the book-shelves 



52 HOW TO STUDY. 

are stored the daily papers, the gloves, the 
mutton tallow, and the box of matches. How 
can any ordered thought spring from such 
surroundings ? How can any but an Old 
Curiosity Shop of a brain live in such a den ? 
Dickens could never work unless, together 
with its usual neatness, his desk was adorned 
with a few odd and familiar ornaments. Most 
able men are similarly methodical. It is no 
longer held a sign of genius to delight in dis- 
order ; and the first step in studying should 
be to arrange and keep, with scrupulous neat- 
ness and exactness, all the books, papers, and 
instruments that belong to the studying. I do 
not mean that you are to be fussy, or get 
yourself into such a state that you cannot 
work unless your dictionary holder is at an 
angle of thirty degrees and every volume of 
your encyclopaedia just two inches from the 
front of the shelf ; but I do want you to learn 
the immense saving of time, strength, and 
temper involved in obedience to the business 
principle, "A place for everything, and 
everything in its place." 

My second business maxim would be, " One 
thing at a time." It's only in your little 
country stores, where much bustle must make 
amends for little business, that you will see a 
man showing goods to one customer, talking 



STUDYING ON BUSINESS PRINCIPLES. 53 

gossip with another, scolding a clerk as a by- 
the-way, all the while scrawling an order to 
be sent with the next mail. In a large estab- 
lishment, where time is really precious, the 
manager sees one man at a time, attends to 
one point at a time, and settles it forever. 

Too much of our study is modeled, is it 
not? on the country store. We begin our 
geometry with our Latin in our mind, and all 
the time we think we are getting one lesson 
we are worrying over the next. " Do ye nexte 
thynge " is a useful and justly popular motto, 
take it at its meaning ; but, as a friend of 
mine remarks, it is doing the " nexte thynge " 
in our anxious minds, when we ought to be 
doing the present thing, that spoils much of 
the work of this world. We can make of our 
minds, at our will, either concave lenses to 
scatter brain-power, or convex lenses to con- 
centrate it. " One thing at a time," then, fel- 
low-students. 

And my next point is important enough to 
have a chapter to itself. 



CHAPTER IX. 

MIDNIGHT OIL. 




E burns the midnight oil : " of whom 
is that customarily said ? Of the 
student, to be sure; poor fools 
that students are ! There is much 
ground for the charge ; and indeed, the student 
is usually silly enough to consider it no indict- 
ment, but a compliment. A compliment ! to 
be heralded as a transgressor of a law written 
afresh each day in golden characters on the 
sky ; written by the mighty sun himself, Avho 
calls us to toil by his rising, and just as im- 
peratively calls us to rest by his setting. A 
compliment ! to have it said of us that Ave pre- 
fer the foul-smelling, flickering, yellow lamp 
or gas-jet to the quiet, strong, pure brilliance 
of the daylight. A compliment ! to be pro- 
claimed a study-drunkard, so intemperate with 
intellectual delights that to get them we paAvn 
eyes and lungs, muscle and heart, good tem- 
per and good health, — pawn them for bits of 
printed paper. 

Some students, to be sure, so deform their 

54 



MIDNIGHT OIL. 55 

lives by bad habits that they cannot study at 
all until the lamps are lighted and begin to 
smoke ; just as some persons can train them- 
selves to eat arsenic. The sensible student 
looks upon both as physiological monstrosi- 
ties. Students, let me tell you what I have 
learned by many a foolish midnight lamp wick. 
I have learned that sleep is the soil of thought. 
Night study is like ploughing, planting, and 
tending a thin and arid soil. The seed springs 
slowly, white and feeble. The fruit hangs list- 
less, small and withered. But the morning 
hour is magical. Ideas push for room without 
the planting. Thought is eager, luxuriant, full- 
freighted. 

On the whole, students, it isn't the quantity 
of your studying that will count, but its qual- 
ity. More students fail from a misconception 
on this point than from any other cause ex- 
cept laziness. Jewelers advise us to wind our 
watches in the morning, that the spring may 
give its most eager tension to the working 
hours of the day. Teachers must give similar 
advice to students ; for good Dame IN'ature 
winds up the mainspring of our lives for us 
by sleep. Do your chief studying while its 
tension is strong. 

Not quantity of study, but quality. How 
many tons of coal-dust equal in value the dia- 



56 HOW TO STUDY. 

mond of twenty carats ? And how many hours 
of black midnight will buy a minute of the 
sparkling morning? Both the last are made 
of time, as both the first are made of carbon. 
Ten minutes under best conditions are worth 
in studying value ten hours under the worst. 

But good conditions mean more than mere 
time of day. How many cubic feet of air go, 
do you think, to the solving of a problem in 
algebra? how many to the translation of a 
page of German ? I suppose the wise men 
could find out for us, if they set about it. 
Most of us are unconscious that we are trans- 
forming fresh air into thought. The windows 
and the stove doors are tightly shut. Our 
thoughts grow stale as the air grows stale; 
our brain grows weak with the weakening of 
the oxygen. Making bricks without straw is 
child's play compared' with the attempt to 
make ideas without oxygen. " O," you know, is 
the chemical symbol of this gas so indispen- 
sable to the student ; and many a time as L 
have placed with my blue pencil a big, round 
cipher opposite some of my scholars' answers, 
or, perchance, inscribed the entire examination 
paper with that condemnation, I have felt 
moved to translate it for the unfortunates, 
" Oxygen ! Oxj^gen ! Take warning ! More 
oxygen ! " 



MIDNIGHT OIL. 57 

But if sleep and fresh air go to make a stu- 
dent, exercise is no less necessary. It is all 
but impossible to get some people to see the 
relation between muscle and mind, between 
brain and blood, between lungs and learning. 
If a Greek sentence seems foggy, they think 
it needs more study ; it probably needs more 
tennis. Fitly is the poet's verse said to be 
made up of feet ! Many a time a walk has 
written an essay for me ; yes, almost as liter- 
ally as if I were the armless man at the circus, 
writing the essay with my feet ! I can climb 
up the steepest slopes of the hill of science, 
provided I can mount my bicycle. O, if men 
and women who want to think only knew of 
what an army their brain might be general-in- 
chief, when they make it a mere private ! — 
general-in-chief of two hundred bones, of four 
hundred muscles, of blood-vessels and nerves 
innumerable. What a pity to force this gen- 
eral to fight his battles alone, while his myriads 
of soldiers are either inactive or in rebellion ! 




CHAPTER X. 

WASTING BRAINS. 

HAT if a general should march forth 
his army with no food supply, 
shelter tents, ambulances, no line of 
comi^^unication, no ammunition, no 
shovels to throw up intrenchments ? What 
universal execration would assail him ! Yet is 
it, really, a smaller folly to march forth our 
brain-troops in a hot, close room, with a dim 
and flickering light, with stomach in dyspep- 
tic rebellion against unfit food, with neck 
choked by a tight collar, or lungs imprisoned 
in a straight-jacket ? Can any knowledge or 
wisdom be the booty of such a campaign ? 

Why, the very rooms in which we study 
fairly determine the quality of our thought. 
If they are ill kept, our thoughts will be 
dowdy ; if they are dirt}^ our thoughts will be 
impure ; if they are gloomy, our brain Avill be 
far from brilliant. 

And the position of our bod}^ has as much to 
do with our mental efficiency as the erect car- 
riage of a soldier has to do with his prompt- 

58 



WASTING BRAINS. 59 

ness, vigor, and bravery. A slouching attitude 
at desk or table contributes to careless think- 
ing ; a position easy, alert, and self-contained 
helps greatly toward the same masterful quali- 
ties in our thought. 

Does this seem materialistic ? Have you an 
uneasy suspicion that mind should rise supe- 
rior to body and physical surroundings ? That 
is a pagan, a Stoical, idea. We are taught a 
higher doctrine. We are taught that our 
bodies are temples of, the Holy Spirit ; and 
how can we justly expect the right exercise of 
the minds He has given us, when we scorn and 
abuse His temple ? 

And so the very first thing a student is to 
attend to, before a page is scanned or a pencil 
touched to paper, is his physical surroundings ; 
to get full and steady light, pure air, fit food 
and proper clothing, cool head, warm feet, the 
glow of exercise and the refreshment of sleep, 
desk and body well mated, a room clean and 
neat and cheery. And if these things are not 
so ordered, the wise student will postpone his 
studying and attend to them. 

The writer once started on an excursion up 
beautiful Lake George. The little steamer 
moved gaily out from Fort William Henry, 
got a few hundred yards from land, ran more 
and more slowly, then stopped. There seemed 



60 now TO STUDY. 

no accident ; there was no breakage in the 
machinery ; nevertheless, we ran in shore, and 
the passengers were told to leave the boat. 
There would be no excursion that day. Some- 
thing was wrong with the machinery; just 
what, no one seemed to know ; but all were 
satisfied with that information. No one wants 
to ride in a steamboat with even a nut loose 
anywhere. Every one knows what is meant 
by " racking machinery," — that a screw loose 
soOn loosens its neighbor ; a rod snapping here 
clogs a wheel there ; and in a very few min- 
utes the contagion of ruin has brought about an 
utter collapse. Yet we think nothing of work- 
ing brain and body with a dozen screws loose 
in the machinery. 

Let us remember that our bodies are much 
more efficient engines than any locomotive 
ever made. The best steam-engine does work 
which represents only one-eighth of the en- 
ergy developed by the burning of the coal ; 
but our bodies manage to make use of fully 
one-fifth of the food-power we put into them, 
merely in such acts as running and handling ; 
and a vastly larger per cent of it is utilized in 
other ways harder to measure. In fact, we 
have an almost perfect engine with which to 
do our thinking. All the more shame to us if 
we use its economies in a spendthrift way. 



WASTING BE A INS. 61 

All the more shame to us if we fasten down 
the safety-valve, or clog the wheels, or allow 
the joints to become dry and rusty. 

In the judgment day, we must believe, such 
questions as these will be asked : of the farmer, 
" How do you answer for the small yield of 
that rich field ? " of the preacher, " How do 
you account for the pitiably few, come to 
heaven from your parish ? " and of the student, 
" What did you do with such a wondrous out- 
fit as I gave you, wherewith you might enrich 
the world with strong and helpful thought ? " 




CHAPTER XI. 

WHAT IS UNDER YOUR HEAD ? 

ND SO, wisely anticipating the judg- 
ment day, let this earnest question 
be asked of every student : " What 
is tinder your head f " You may im- 
agine the stern query propounded by a Sphinx, 
sitting solemnly on the road named Success in 
Life, and with her great paw knocking off on 
the gloomy by-path of Disappointment every 
one of you that cannot pass her examination 
satisfactorily. 

First (as the Sphinx will want to know). Is 
a good pair of lungs under your head ? Brains 
are fine thino^s, with their wise wrinkles and 
sage convolutions ; but brains, after all, are 
dull things without lungs to blow the breath 
of life into them, and keep it there, fresh and 
vigorous. Why, your brain may be as big as 
Cuvier's or Butler's, but if your lungs are as 
shriveled as some must be, I would no more 
insure your intellectual fame than a life-in- 
surance company would insure your poor, ill- 
treated body. 

62 



WHAT IS UNDER YOUR HEAD? 63 

Secondly. Is a good stomach under your 
head? You may laugh, but just wait until 
you try to drive genius and dyspepsia in the 
same harness. Brains and bile are mortal foes. 
If your stomach won't digest food, it really 
doesn't matter how many tons of facts your 
brains will digest. A strong head on a weak 
stomach is about as useful as the Lick tele- 
scope would be, planted on a bobbing buoy. 

Thirdly. Is a good pair of hands under your 
head ? Not hands white and delicately formed, 
though I have no objection in the world to 
that ; but — what is more to the point in con- 
nection with your head — hands that are shrewd 
to carry out what the brain is shrewd to con- 
trive, busy hands, accurate hands, quick hands, 
ready hands, gentle hands, brave hands, — are 
those under your head ? Hands that can 
write down your brain's wise fancies with a 
penmanship clear as print. Hands that can, if 
need be, — and need is likely to be, — help your 
fine brain eke out a livelihood. A brain without 
hands is like a general without staff officers. 

Fourthly. Is a good pair of feet under your 
head ? Kot feet that are weak and clumsy 
and smarting with corns and — pretty because 
the tightly squeezed leather outside is pretty, 
but feet that retain nature's beautiful outlines, 
feet that are on good terms with the ground, 



64 HOW TO STUDY. 

and can ])ress it with loving, easy grace, for a 
liappy twenty miles at a time. Errand-speed- 
ing feet. Dancing, springing, merry feet. 
Feet soft and light in sick-rooms. Feet sturdy 
and swift on the path of duty. Are these un- 
der your head ? 

O, I know, students, what a masterful thing 
a head is. I know what mountain-high diffi- 
culties it can overleap. I know what triumphs 
a Henry Martyn, for instance, can wring out 
of his frail, fever-tortured, cough-racked body, 
"burning out for God." I know that Avhen 
God chooses to hold up a man's head with 
nothing under it, — or next to nothing, like 
Mahomet's coffin suspended in mid-air by in- 
visible forces, — God can do it. But, just the 
same. He seldom does do it ; and it is the most 
impudent presumption to abuse our bodies in 
the faith that He will do it. 

Look upon 3^our head, young people, — and 
old, — as the glorious climax of your bodies ; 
but don't try to build a pyramid out of an 
apex, Avith no foundation. In one sense, the 
pedestal is as important as the statue that it sup- 
ports. And if your pedestal is crumbling, and 
just ready to totter, stop your chiseling away 
at the statue long enough to build up a stout 
pedestal, else the statue itself, Avith nil its grow- 
ing beauty, will topple in ruin to the ground. 




CHAPTEE XII. 

THE LESSON SIMPSON LEARNED. 

]^E learns a great deal from one's doc- 
tor, whether one wants to or not. 
The bed is a school not so easy to 
run away from, and as the physician 
sits by the bedside he occupies a professor's 
chair of much prominence to at least one per- 
son in the world. I want to tell you of a les- 
son my young friend Simpson learned in this 
school not many months ago. 

Simpson is a schoolteacher himself, and so 
should not have been obliged to go to the doctor's 
school ; but there he was, flat on his back with 
the most distressing of nervous headaches, — a 
headache such as I hope half of you — it is too 
much to hope none of you — know nothing about ; 
one that set every shred of the brain and every 
fibre of the body quivering with excruciating 
pain. And amid his throbs of agony Simpson 
was bemoaning to the doctor his worries over 
his school that he ought to be teaching, and 
his studies that he ought to be studying, 
and beseeching the doctor to give him some- 

65 



66 HOW TO STUDY. 

thing he could take, to put him to work 
again. 

In answer to the doctor's question the whole 
story came out. Simpson was remaining out 
of college his junior year in order to get 
money enough for his senior year, and he was 
trying to teach school all day and keep up 
with his college class by studjdng a large part 
of the night. "I got along famously until 
lately," he moaned. " I have had a good many 
headaches all along, but a cup of strong coffee 
and live of my headache tablets have always 
cured me in the course of an hour or so, so 
that I could go on with my work again. But 
lately these have not seemed to do much good. 
And now, doctor, what shall I take f " 

Then came the little lesson I mentioned at 
the beginning. The doctor rose from his chair 
so that he looked down at Simpson, very tall 
and solemn. " Young man," said he, " what 
you need to take is not medicine, but rest — 
rest and exercise and good food, with time to 
digest it well. Headaches are symjytoms, and 
you are trying to cure the symptoms, without 
looking deeper to find the evil to Avhich they 
would direct your attention. Your nerves are 
crying out for rest, and you give them head- 
ache tablets and higher mathematics. Your 
brain is begging for change, for fresh air, and 



THE LESSON SIMPSON LEARNED. 67 

hearty sport, and long sound slumber ; and 
you are answering its entreaties with coffee 
and astronomy. 

" Young man, life is not to be lived in that 
way. There is room in a year for a year's 
work, and no more. If you strive to squeeze 
more in, something must go out, and that 
something is a priceless thing — your health. 
You are shortening your time on earth, young 
man, far more than you are shortening your 
time in college. A living dog is better than a 
dead lion. You expect, like so many thou- 
sands, to obtain health at the price of a box of 
pills, but it costs far more than that. Health 
costs time and thought and energy and patience 
and self-restraint, and perseverance in all these 
things. 

" I will give you no dose, young man, except 
this mild opiate to relieve your present suffer- 
ings. If, when your .headache has passed 
away, you will call at my .office having in your 
pocket a letter of resignation from your junior 
class, and in your heart the determination to 
follow the laws of health God has so plainly 
written on the very nerves and fibres of your 
body, I will help you to lay down a daily 
regimen that will add many years to your life, 
as well as unmeasured happiness and useful- 
ness. Good-day." 



68 HOW TO STUDY. 

And what did young Simpson think about 
this frank prescription of the doctor's ? All I 
know is that he is no longer a member of the 
class of '01 in Solvarj College. 




CHAPTEE XIII. 

THE ETHICS OF QUOTATIOI^ MARKS. 

IN'E of my pupils once ordered a trans- 
lation of a G-reek classic through a 
bookseller, telling him that I ap- 
proved the use of translations in the 
preparation of lessons.' Afterward the book- 
seller came to me in innocent astonishment, 
and asked if that thing were so ! He should 
have known that a person mean enough to lie 
to me in the recitation room, would be mean 
enough to lie about me outside of it. 

To all young people whose consciences are 
not delicate, the school and the college offer 
innumerable temptations to dishonesty. If 
virtue could be taught as we teach rhetoric, 
at the entrance to every course of study would 
soon be placed a term devoted to the Ethics 
of Quotation Marks. And that term's drill 
would be wisely spent in the impression of 
this one truth : " Every quotation that is not 
enclosed in quotation marks is a lie." 

In literary societies amazed teachers some- 
times hear their pupils reading, as their own, 

69 



70 HOW TO STUDY. 

essays which Emerson might have written, 
but would surely know how to pronounce, if 
he had written ! I once listened to a very 
philosophical dissertation on Goethe's genius, 
Avhose author (?) constantly referred to the 
subject of his paper as " Goth." In another 
instance I began seriously to doubt a pupil's 
authorship of a very excellent paper when he 
read, in starting, the title: "United States, 
Mineral Eesources of ! " 

A scholar should be taught early that it 
requires more smartness to steal successfully 
— if it may be called success — any composition 
whatever, than to write the original article 
itself. If your ordinary talk is full of deep 
thought, expressed in classic phrase, replete 
with learned allusions, then you may borrow 
from great writers without giving credit, and 
defy detection. But, then, it would not be 
necessary ! Your every common word betrays 
you, if you steal from any better writer than 
yourself. 

You would not trade noses with some one 
and appear in public expecting that the change 
would not be noted by your friends ; yet you 
present as the product of your own brains an 
essay out of harmon}^ with your every habit 
of interest, thought, and expression. Why do 
you not bethink yourself that your friends are 



THE ETHICS OF QUOTATION MARKS. 71 

far better acquainted with your brain than 
with your nose ? 

" Ah, but," it is often said, " every thought 
has been expressed already, and there is no 
chance for originality." Then there is a chance 
for honesty in the use of quotation marks. A 
young writer should begin with compilations, 
— historical, biographical, or scientific; only 
let them le compilations, — the fruit, that is, of 
wide reading, — and call them compilations, 
stating the sources of information. He will be 
ready for true original writing just as soon as he 
begins to see and think for himself, and learns 
that the honest expression of any individuality 
is always rare, valuable, and interesting. 

One who is in the habit of examining the 
second-hand copies of Xenophon, C^sar, Yir- 
gil and such authors found, piled on the dusty 
corner-shelves of most book stores, will soon 
become familiar with a habit widely in vogue 
among college students, — at least among that 
portion of them who sell their old books. 
These thumb-marked, dog-eared volumes are 
almost invariably black with lead-pencil trans- 
lations written between the Greek and Latin 
lines, — translations often ludicrously false, but 
showing, the most correct of them, the false- 
ness of the one who wrote them. 

Scholars who would probably consider it 



72 HOW TO STUDY. 

dishonorable to use an interlinear, thus make 
their own interlinear at their rooms, and re- 
cite, forsooth, by the easy process of trans- 
lating their own crabbed lead-pencil marks. 
Across every such deception-stained page there 
is Avritten in invisible ink one very uncompli- 
mentary word of three letters. The fire of an 
uneasy conscience will make the invisible ink 
very plain, sometimes, and the little word will 
glow angrily out through all the lead-pencil 
marks. 

Probably the most disheartening, sickening 
experience of a teacher's life is the discovery 
of cheating at examinations. This discovery 
is perfectly easy, to a teacher of any experi- 
ence. You may have a whole volume on your 
boot, easily read when your legs are crossed ; 
your cuffs may epitomize the entire work of 
the term ; your Avriting tablet may be inter- 
leaved Avith condensed information ; you may 
get a chance to copy half the book in the 
teacher's absence from the room ; your pocket 
may be full of crumpled but significant bits 
of paper; your neighbor's work may be in 
plain sight and you may appropriate half of 
it, — the teacher need be on the lookout for 
none of these or a thousand other tricks. If 
you have been reciting to him, he needs no 
examination to tell him what you know, and 



THE ETHICS OF QUOTATION 31 ARKS. 73 

your brilliant, false paper has only been a test 
of your honesty, wherein you have miserably 
failed. 

It is often exceedingly difficult to know 
when it is best to deal openly with transgress- 
ors in this matter, and when a reform can be 
brought about by quieter methods. I once 
had a young girl in my class who persisted in 
the boldest cheating, again and again, until I 
sent her off into the college library to work 
out her papers by herself. Those papers were 
uniformly abominable, and never of passing 
grade !. The same appeal, on the contrary, to 
a young man's honor, once brought a paper 
more audaciously and manifestly obtained by 
cheating than ever before. Many a scholar 
has chuckled over the thought that he has 
successfully deceived his teacher, while that 
teacher was praying earnestly for wisdom to 
make no false step but to do what might be 
best to bring him back to honesty and honor. 

Yes, and what if no one ever finds it out ? 
Teachers have far too little time, to waste it 
in seeking out faults that are not forced upon 
their attention. You may successfully cheat 
your teacher. Is there not One who cannot 
be cheated ? 

Your conscience can never be too delicate 
for manliness in this matter. I like to hear a 



74 HOW TO STUDY. 

scholar, when he translates a sentence as the 
editor translates it, laugh and say " Notes ! " 
in a half-apologetic way. I like to see a 
scholar, when at the blackboard, turn his back, 
impolitely but honestly, on his classmate and 
his classmate's work. I like to be asked for 
permission even to borrow a penknife, in the 
course of an examination. I like to see 
scholars leave their books at home on exami- 
nation day, and come without voluminous 
wrappings of shawl and overcoat. I like to 
see papers turned face down, when written, 
not face up, ready for neighborly exchange of 
information. I like to have scholars come 
honestly to me, as one or two have come, and 
ask me if I approve the use of translations 
at home, and written original translations 
brought into the classroom, and promise to 
abide by my decision. One cannot be too sen- 
sitive in avoiding the very appearance of what 
is dishonorable. 

Let us be ourselves. Any dishonest addition 
is a loss. Let us be willing to be held mediocre 
rather than be sinful. A " pony " will carry 
us straight to sorrow. A " key " will open the 
door to shame. Our interlineations here mean 
dark interlinings in the record above. Let us 
be ourselves, and when we use what is not our 
own, let us never forget the quotation marks. 



CHAPTER XIY. 

HOW SCHOLARS MAY IMPROVE THEIR 
TEACHERS. 




HE genial Dr. Trumbull makes, some- 
where, this neat point : Suppose, he 
says, that one man is thirsty. You 
have your scholar. Another man 
brings a bucket of water. You have your 
teacher. But that is not all. The thirsty man 
is not a whit better off until in some way the 
water is inside the man. The question is, as 
Dr. Trumbull says, how to get some of the 
bucket's brimf ulness into the man's brim-empti- 
ness. 

Now I want to say, students, that for every 
scholar I have had who failed to be taught be- 
cause he was not bright enough to understand, 
I have had ten who failed to be taught because 
they and I never got within reaching distance 
of each other. Their lips kept away from the 
bucket. 

Sometimes it was my fault. Sometimes it 
was because they came with brains smothered 
by unventilated rooms, or dulled with the 

75 



76 HOW TO STUDY. 

stagnant blood of unexercised muscles, so that 
they were too stupid to put their lips to the 
bucket. Sometimes they really did not find^ 
out in Avhat way I was trying to help them, so 
that they might respond, or their attention 
was called away entirely from the work in 
which alone, just then, I was trying to meet 
them. 

Do you want to know what a teacher feels 
like when he discovers that all his attempts at 
helping his scholars are meeting with no re- 
sponse? He feels like an usher Avho walks 
the whole length of the church, and turns to 
find himself ushering nobody. He feels like 
the preacher who talked so eloquently to a 
congregation of deaf-mutes ; like the near- 
sighted man who bowed to the dunmiy in the 
shop-window. It is lilie walking up that step 
after the last, which isn't there. 

Every teacher ought to know this — that be- 
fore he can teach he must become the scliokir ; 
enter, that is, into the scholar's needs, his 
powers and attainments. And just as truly, 
every scholar should know that before he can 
learn he must become the teacher ; enter, that 
is, into the teacher's plans and desires, and en- 
deavor to work with him. 

Obviously, one of the most important fac- 
tors in studying is ^the teacher ; but students 



SCHOLARS MAY IMPROVE THEIR TEACHERS. 11 

are very likely to study with no reference to 
their instructor, taking it for granted either 
that he is all right or that he is mostly wrong, 
and not stopping to think about their relation 
to him. Much of the fruitfulness of this re- 
lation, however, depends upon the scholar ; 
and though young America prides himself on 
being business-like, yet he usually commits the 
unpardonable business error of drawing from 
his schooling a dividend far lower than it is 
willing to pay. 

Teachers accept the principle that the poor 
scholar is the opportunity of their art. In the 
same way, many and many a time, the poor 
teacher is the scholar's opportunity, and waits 
but a helpful touch from his pupil to flash into 
eager life. How may it be done ? 

First. If you do not want a machine- 
teacher, you must see to it that the mere ma- 
chinery of teaching does not require all of his 
energy. Suppose a captain in battle should be. 
obliged to stop and give instructions as to the 
meaning of '' right wheel " and " charge bayo- 
nets " and " ground arms " ! He could not do 
much fighting with that company. Many a 
time I have planned a charge along the whole 
line for the recitation hour, and have been com- 
pelled in chagrin to spend that hour in hum- 
drum drill in the manual of arms, in the ele- 



78 HOW TO STUDY. 

ments of the work, which should have been 
mastered in the study-room. To put it in 
brief, no preparation by the scholar, no in- 
spiration from the teacher. 

Second. Did you ever think that you can 
help your teacher by getting help from him ? 
You are nonplussed by a problem. Do not 
get a classmate to aid you, or fail on it in reci- 
tation. Go to the teacher. While he shows 
you the solution, you will show him that you 
are in earnest in your studies, and that you do 
not consider him a taskmaster, but a friend. 
Oh, those chance conversations with one's 
scholars, wherein the bright young folk make 
it clear that their studies have entered the 
charmed circle of their unforced interest ! 
How, forever after, they lift the classroom 
work Avith those scholars safely above the line 
of drudgery ! 

Third. You can readily imagine the feel- 
ings of a bride when the groom saunters in 
half an hour late to the wedding. By the 
same token the teacher can guess that you are 
not passionately in love with his study. Nor 
would a despondent bearing and funereal coun- 
tenance on the part of the aforesaid bride- 
groom make the matter much better. Com- 
pliment your teacher with promptness and 
with cheerful alacrity of mien, and, my word 



SCHOLARS MAY niPBOVE THEIR TEACHERS. 79 

for it, jour compliment will pay you a good 
interest. 

Fourth. Preachers say that they often 
have this experience : They prepare a sermon 
with especial care to meet the needs of some 
one member of their congregation, and rise in 
pulpit on Sunday to find that person's pew 
vacant. Their disappointment and blank per- 
plexity are no more than what many a teacher 
has felt, when, after he has planned a special 
exercise or a whole recitation to meet the 
needs of some especial scholar, he sees that 
scholar's place empty. That sort of thing 
soon takes the life out of a teacher. 

Fifth. Every one knows that among all the 
incidents of social life nothing is quite so ex- 
asperating as to invite some one to a party, 
and never receive a reason for his absence. 
This is true of any social engagement. E'ow 
if scholars want to get the most out of their 
teachers, they must remember that those 
teachers have the same general set of feelings 
as other people. 

Sixth. A teacher is in many ways as de- 
pendent for enthusiasm upon his class as an 
orator upon his audience. If an orator gets a 
poor audience, it's like trying to strike fire 
out of putty; but a responsive audience 
kindles the orator. In recitation, then, be 



80 BOW TO STUDY. 

sympathetic ; be full of interest. Put yourself 
in the receptive mood. In the Latin class be- 
come a Koman ; in the geometry class, a tri- 
angle. Ask intelligent questions, and many 
of them. Looking back over my classes, I can 
recall, in each, one or two uplifted hands and 
snapping lingers which have pointed me to 
success in those classes, and I thank them for 
it. And listen, without whispering. You 
have joined hands, have you not, to receive a 
current from an electric battery ? What 
happened w^hen any one dropped hands ? 
Why, just what happens when one whispers 
to his neighbor in the classroom. lio more 
enthusiasm. No more electricity. 

Seventh. Don't be discouraged if your 
teacher happens to be cross. Be patient with 
him. You are probably suffering for the sins 
of the class just before you, and upon your 
good behavior depends the comfort of the class 
to come after you. I once heard a member of 
one of my classes whisper to an incoming 
scholar, " He's cross to-day. Look out ! " I 
am sure that next class was astonished at my 
good humor. But teachers are seldom thus 
warned, and often unconsciously make one 
class suffer for the poor lesson or bad behavior 
of its predecessor. 

Eighth. You cannot dampen a teacher's 



SCHOLARS MAY IMPROVE THEIR TEACHERS. 81 

ardor more quickly than by telling him 
frankly, as some have kindly told me, that 
you don't like his study, and never will ! Ex- 
press appreciation of your teacher's work. 
Don't be afraid of making him conceited. 
There is an infinity of things by which a 
teacher is made humble, and kept so. But if 
he perceives in his scholars no more apprecia- 
tion of his work than a stone-mason in the 
stone he carves, he will do stone-mason's work, 
no more. 

And lastly, you will greatly invigorate your 
teacher by showing a willingness to do more 
work than is required — outside work. When 
one has an appetite for a thing, one has to 
guard against over-eating. I judge by this 
test the true student, always. Where are the 
scholars who study beyond the stint, who read 
all the books in the library on the subject they 
are studying, who require the bit and curb 
rather than the spur ? I have known them, 
and more in number than you would think, 
and bless them every time I think of them, for 
their helpful enthusiasm, at which, more than 
once, my own has been rekindled. 

And now I may sum it all up in this sen- 
tence from the great emperor, Marcus Aurelius 
Antoninus : " We are made for co-operation, 
like feet, like hands, like eyelids, like the rows 



82 SOW TO STUDY. 

of the upper and lower teeth." A good teacher 
is in great part made by his scholars, simply 
because good teaching is a co-operative 
process. 




CHAPTEE XV. 

PUT YOUR PLAY INTO YOUR WORK. * 

WILL give you a short chapter on a 
long theme. 

I am writing this at the end of 
vacation. The red cheeks, bright 
eyes, brown skins and hearty laughs of the 
scholars everywhere tell me that vacation play 
has done its appointed work. But how hard 
it is to leave the play, and go back to work 
again ! My dear students, don't leave the 
play! 

" ]^o work ? " you cry in astonishment. I 
didn't say that. Put your play into your 
work. Your schooling will be a failure other- 
wise. 

Let me tell you something. J}^o ivork is 
well done until it is easily done. The might- 
iest machine I ever saw, with all its ponder- 
ous beams and wheels, distributing water 
through hundreds of miles of pipe over the 
great city of Chicago, caused not so much jar 
and confusion in its working as my chain pump. 

I made an engagement once to meet a cer- 



84 HOW TO STUDY. 

tain student for recitation during recreation 
hours. I apologized when I thought, but he 
said it made no difference, as he never took 
any recreation. He spoke the truth, and I 
fear he was proud of the statement. But I 
wanted to say to him, "My dear boy, you 
may study ten hours a day. Let me assure 
you that you could do much better work with 
eight hours' study and two hours' play. You 
lack a certain alertness and vigor of intellect 
which a proper amount of sport gives. It is a 
sort of mental poise, an ease and balance of 
the mind, which renders all its operations 
pleasurable." 

It's a serious thing to become incapable of 
sport ! I should like to write on every school 
desk these words : " No work is mastered until 
it has become play ! " Is the musician satis- 
fied while eyes must follow fingers, while he 
must glance anxiously at every note, and 
tremble at every difficult passage ? Not until 
the execution of the piece has become a sec- 
ond nature is the " performer " a musician. 

When is a page of German learned ? AYhen 
it can be read as promptly as English. When 
is a lesson in grammar mastered ? When you 
can talk as glibly about the parts of the sen- 
tence as about the pictures on the wall. When 
have you solved a problem in arithmetic ? 



PUT YOUR PLAY INTO YOUR WORK. 85 

When you can walk through it from step to 
step with as easy assurance as through a house 
you have lived in all your life. When are you 
ready for an examination ? When you are 
prepared for an oral examination as rapid as 
your teacher can talk. The secret of scholar- 
ship is patient, persistent, dogged review, until 
the task becomes play. 

One of the teacher's greatest joys is to 
make a scholar realize in his own experience 
the blessedness and freedom of thoroughness. 
The vast majority of scholars are constantly 
weighed nearly to earth with the burden of 
tasks half finished — tasks which the true 
scholar has so thoroughly done at the right 
time that the result has become part of his 
mental fibre, no greater clog than his brain 
itself. 

Your long, happy vacations have taught you, 
I trust, how to play. Kow let the play ele- 
ment go into your study. You have taken a 
long step toward the Christ:ideal when you 
not only carry His spirit of helpful earnestness 
into your play, but put His grand serenity and 
cheerful equipoise into your work. 




CHAPTEK XYI. 

GET OKE day's work AHEAD. 

NE of the very brightest little books 
ever written is a collection of anec- 
dotes concerning Socrates, written 
by his friend Xenophon. In it 
Xenophon tells the following story of the 
good old Greek philosopher. 

Socrates once heard a man groaning over 
the prospect of a walk from Athens to Olym- 
pia, to attend the great festival there. " Why," 
said Socrates to him, " you would walk about 
a great deal if you stayed at home. Put all 
those little Avalks together. They will easily 
carry you to Olympia. You will merely walk 
about a little, then dine ; then walk about a 
little more, and go to bed and rest. You'll 
have no trouble, my friend, if you only start 
in time, so that 3^ou can make each day's jour- 
ney of comfortable length. It's very weari- 
some to start one da}^ late, and be compelled 
to lengthen out forced journeys ; but, my dear 
sir, you'll be surprised to see what a sense of 
ease and leisure you will gain by starting one 

86 



GET ONE DAY'S WORK ARE AD. 87 

day too early. It's better to hurry at the 
beginning than the end," 

And now, are not all students going to 
Olympia? The contests there will be more 
difficult than they realize, the prizes more 
glorious than they can imagine ; and the ad- 
vice of wise old Socrates is not a whit spoiled 
by its age of twenty -two centuries. 

It is a fact, I think, that most scholars are 
perpetually in a hurry. They get the lesson 
which is to be recited after dinner just before 
dinner ; they take home their books at night 
to get the first morning lesson. They seem to 
live, mentally, from hand to mouth, like veri- 
table intellectual tramps. They seem to parody 
the Bible sentence, and declare, " Sufficient 
unto the day is the study thereof." 

If this is true of you, look out ! For I tell 
you there are few things that harm more than , 
worry. And there are few things so sure-to 
cause worry as hurry. Watch, and see if I'm 
not right ! 

Take Socrates' advice. Put your hurry 
where it will do some good — at the beginning. 
Get one day^s tvorh ahead, and Tceep there ! 
Do not reject the plan for fear of forgetting 
your lesson. If a lesson will not keep two 
days, how will it keep till examination time ? 

" But this plan does not make my work any 



88 HOW TO STUDY, 

less / " Who said it did ? But do you not see 
a difference between driving your work, and 
letting it drive you? between racked nerves 
and an even temper? between anxiety and 
peace? between fagged bodies and fresh ones? 
The true scholar works quietly, serenely 
looking ahead, eager at the start, never flur- 
ried on the journey. And is not that the way 
God v\^orks ? If I mistake not, the oak-tree 
studies ahead, or it would never make its 
acorns, and every summer, all over the world, 
reads a good way ahead in God's great year- 
book. 

" Are you in earnest? Seize this very ininute ! 
What you can do, or dream you can, begin it ! 
Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it." 




CHAPTEE XYII. 

ABSOEBING INFOEMATION. 

K]^0 W a man who could walk through 
the main street of a city perfectly 
strange to him, and at the end of 
the way you would take him for an 
old inhabitant. He would know the chief 
industries of the town, its moral and social 
and financial condition, the names of its prom- 
inent merchants and pastors, the prevailing 
politics, the sentiment in regard to the liquor 
question, the efficiency of the public schools, 
the names of the daily papers, the geological 
strata beneath, the chief products of the sur- 
rounding farms, — he could even direct a man 
who had lost his way. That is Eichard 
Eeadywit. 

Among my acquaintances is another gentle- 
man who could walk along the same thorough- 
fare, and at the end of it be obliged to inquire 
his way back. He would not know the points 
of the compass if it was a cloudy day. He 
would not know where to find a single store 
in town, or any public building. He would 

89 



90 HOW TO STUDY. 

have no idea whatever of the kind of dwelling- 
houses or the character of the people or 
the nature of their occupations. As soon as, 
barely reaching the station in time, he hurried 
on board the train, he would be obliged to ask 
his neighbor what town they had just left. 
That is Simon Slowboy. 

Now neither Kichard Ready wit nor Simon 
Slowboy made any exertion in the walk sup- 
posed. They simply abandoned themselves to 
the habits they had formed ; and Simon could 
no more gather all this information than Eich- 
ard could help gathering it. A barber was 
once eulogizing a young friend of mine whom 
the barber considered a prodigy of learning. 
"Why, sar," he explained, flourishing his 
razor, " his brain's jes' like a sponge. It 
soaks up eb'ryting it touches." That is true 
of some men. They seem to absorb informa- 
tion. 

Lay that piece of blotting paper upon an 
ink-blot. It lies there quietly. It is doing 
nothing. It is not going after the ink ; the 
ink is coming to it. Make another ink-blot 
and put this piece of calendered paper upon it. 
The ink is not absorbed at all, but only spread, 
more widely. There is a wonderful power, 
called capillary attraction, which lifts liquids 
into small vessels without any force but the 



ABSORBING INFORMATION. 91 

liking of the liquid for the sides of the tubes. 
Put a glass tube into water, and I defy you 
to keep the water inside the tube down at 
the level of the water outside it. The tube 
did not seek the water, but the water rose in 
the tube. Of course, if you stop the mouth of 
the tube, or if the tube is exceedingly small, 
the experiment will fail. 

And that is the trouble with the calendered 
paper. The porous blotter is filled with 
thousands of these little lifting tubes ; but in 
the calendered paper their mouths are all 
glazed over. The calendered paper is very 
smooth, shiny, and elegant ; but it won't ab- 
sorb ink. That's v^hy, my readers, a good 
many folks cannot absorb information : they 
are supercalendered with pride. They have 
an idea that it is vulgar to ask questions, and 
quite the proper thing to pretend to have been 
born into the world a complete encyclopaedia 
brought down to date. Of course no man can 
absorb information who has all his question- 
pores glazed over with conceit. 

And then many people that are really hum- 
ble enough about it, lack this power of ab- 
sorbing information because they have never 
trained themselves to it ; because, however 
automatic it may become after a while, it is 
not so at the beginning. I suppose no man 



92 HOW TO STUDY. 

can see so many little things at once, and see 
them so accurately, as a sleight-of-hand man. 
His eye photographs, at a mere glance, ob- 
jects, persons, and acts, down to the finest de- 
tails, where our dull vision sees only the out- 
lines. Do you know how he does it ? This, I 
am told, was a method of training adopted by 
the renowned prestidigitator, Hermann. He 
walked rapidly past a shop window, glancing 
in as he walked, and noting as many objects 
as he could. . Then he verified his impressions. 
Then he took a census of another window. So 
he practised until, from the ability to grasp in- 
distinctly only a few objects at a glance, he 
gained the power of instantly forming vivid 
mental pictures of large groups of objects 
most diverse. 

In some such way these people Avho absorb 
information readily have trained themselves. 
The first time Richard Ready wit passed 
through a strange town he probably noted 
only the names of the streets and the kinds of 
shops he was passing. But the noting of these 
things once, made him more sensitive to note 
them the next time ; so that in the next town 
he visited he had some attention to spare for 
other matters. And thus his power of com- 
prehension grew with use. 

Of course there can be no absorbing of in- 



ABSORBING INF0B3IATI0N. 93 

formation about a thing, however, without a 
little knowledge of the thing to start with. 
Set a ready-witted drummer down in a strange 
hotel, and in half an hour he will know more 
about the affairs of the town than the average 
reporter ; but if he is not a religious man, he 
will not know much about its church life ; and 
if he is not somewhat versed in geology, he 
will not know anything about the geological 
strata beneath. Put the best blotting paper 
half an inch away from the edge of the big- 
gest ink-spot, and there will be no absorbing 
of ink. There must come in a little funda- 
mental know^ledge to impel the most absorb- 
ent mind toward a subject ; to furnish, as it 
were, the point of contact. 

But, at the start, I forgot. You might do 
something to the glass tube which would pre- 
vent the water from rising in it. Grease it. 
However much capillary attraction there 
might be between the water and the sides of 
the tube, the water has no liking for the oil, 
and will not go near it. That furnishes the 
last point in my list, ^o man can absorb in- 
formation if he hates information. If he has 
smeared his whole mind over with a slimy, 
lazy dislike for new ideas and fresh knowl- 
edge, you may soak him in notions and learn- 
ing for a twelvemonth, and he'll absorb none 



94 BOW TO STUDY. 

of it. But let him love to learn ; let him 
reach out eagerly, hungrily, after mental food, 
and he'll swallow it as rapidly and digest it as 
thoroughly as healthy children absorb bread 
and butter. 

To sum up. Absorbing information is a fine 
art, in which any one may become proficient 
who throws away his pride, gets a little knowl- 
edge, and trains himself patiently and lov- 
ingly. 




CHAPTER XYIII. 

PUTTING one's mind ON IT. 

ITPPOSE that when you wanted to 
lift a dish of apples, one hand should 
fly to your pockets and the other 
make wild gestures in the air ; or 
suppose that when you desired to look at a 
friend coming toward you, one eye should 
scan the heavens and the other peruse the 
ground ; would you not think something seri- 
ously wrong with you ? But if, when you, sit 
down to study, one half of your mind flies off 
to the playground and the other falls to be- 
laboring the poor teacher, you say that you 
cannot " concentrate your mind " ; and that's 
the end of it. Why, ray dear young man, my 
dear young woman, that's all that is the mat- 
ter with the insane and idiotic, — they cannot 
control their minds by their wills. 

Sitting before your books, you first estimate 
the length of the lesson — outrageously long! 
Then you compare it with yesterday's lesson 
— teacher is becoming more unreasonable every 
day! Then you count up the pages left to 

95 



96 HOW TO STUDY. 

study, and cipher out how long it will take at 
three pages a day. 'No need of going so fast. 
Then you wonder if George has his lesson, 
and ask him. He hasn't. Then you read the 
lesson over. You don't understand a word of 
it. You ask George if he understands a word 
of it. He doesn't. Then 3^ou count up the 
number of days left in the term. Thirty-one 
days and six hours and three-quarters. You 
read the lesson once more — a little clearer. 
You see by the clock that 3^ou have been 
studying half an hour. You ask George if he 
has to study his lesson half an hour. He does. 
You read the lesson once more. As dark as 
ever. Discouraged, you draw a picture of the 
teacher — an awful picture, with horns.^ By 
this time you have studied an hour, and that 
is all the time you can spend on this lesson. 
Lesson's too long, anyway. 

Of course, that is an abominable caricature 
of the way 3^ou stud}^, but you will all agree 
that it's a pretty fair picture of the way most 
of your schoolmates study. Do you want me 
to give you some hints on the cure of mind- 
wandering? I shall, whether you want me 
to or not. 

Hint First. — It can't be cured quickl}^ You 
know how many months it takes a baby to 
control its swaying, wandering feet ? 



PUTTING ONE'S MIND ON IT. 97 

Hint Second. — You're not enough in earnest. 
If you ever, by and by, fall in love, you will 
come to know what concentration of mind 
means. You are not enough in love with your 
studies. 

Hint Third. — The very next time you are 
troubled with mind-wandering, notice what 
that is to which your mind has strayed, and 
straightway reduce it, be it what it may, to a 
less degree of prominence in your lives. Does 
your mind show a tendency to wander into 
thoughts of the next game of ball, or that ex- 
citing serial story ? Then choose some game 
and some story less exacting in its interest. 
Do thoughts of your mates, of those you dis- 
like and of those you like very much indeed, 
divert your studious mind? Then you must 
be a hermit for a time, or you will never be a 
scholar. 

Hint Fourth, — One who is master of his 
mind could do good studying in the midst of a 
nominating convention, but that would be a 
poor place to cure mind- wandering. You 
wouldn't try to break in a colt on Broadway. 
Study alone as much as possible. If nothing 
else can induce you to withdraw for study to 
a quiet nook, do as Demosthenes did ; shave 
half your head, and thus force yourselves out 
of society. I have seen a great many students, 



98 HOW TO STUDY. 

but no one of them all was successful who pre- 
ferred to study with some one else to help look 
up words in the dictionary, add figures, hint 
at solutions, and suggest translations. Schol- 
ars do not grow in crowds. There is no such 
thing as co-operative studying any more than 
co-operative eating. Whenever two people 
study together, one is a student and the other 
a dummy. Yet, after the studying has been 
done, companionship is of the highest value. 
I have elsewhere urged you always to review 
your lessons with a friend. His mind has seen 
what you have missed. His questions will 
develop your strength. Your discussions will 
vivify the whole. The scholar grows in soli- 
tude, but he bears fruit in a crowd. 

Hint Fifth. — Fix a time and place for the 
study of each lesson. A horse, set for a few 
days to doing certain tasks in certain places 
and times, soon learns to do them without the 
whip and rein. Tasks which, to the irregular 
student's bewildered' brain, are a daily worry, 
are accomplished almost mechanically by a 
brain methodically used. 

Hint Sixth. — Cultivate regularity in all the 
details of your life, as well as studying. Some 
people think that, because their business is not 
playing, or eating, or letter- writing, or reading, 
or talking with their friends, or running to the 



PUTTING ONE'S MIND ON IT. 99 

post-office, therefore it makes no difference 
when they do these things. But it does. You 
will find that if you accustom yourselves to 
doing all things at all times, it will be next to 
impossible for you to do merely one thing at 
any time. You will want to study at one 
o'clock, but into your study will rush reminis- 
cences of the walk you took yesterday at that 
hour, your novel of the day before, and your 
lunch of the day before that. Perfect system 
in even the smallest things, — that is one secret 
of the power of concentration. 

Hint Seventh. — Exercise. Eat properly. 
Dress properly. Take fresh air, and plenty 
of it. Who could train his mental batteries 
accurately on a problem while painfully con- 
scious that digestion is going on, while his 
head is throbbing, his eye smarting, his body 
languid and sick ? Get your body to leave 
your mind alone, and then see whether you can- 
not assume command of your mental faculties. 

Hint Eighth. — Don't worry. Keep a clear 
conscience. Undertake only what you can do 
thoroughly and on time. Leave nothing un- 
done to haunt all your working hours. A 
general can hardly direct his troops with force 
against an enemy in front while he has several 
unconquered regiments of foes dodging about 
in his rear. 
LfTC 



100 HO IV TO STUDY. 

Hint Ninth. — You will be troubled with 
mind- wandering in connection with the studies 
you like the least. Have you ever thought 
that right here you must mass your powers, 
or be a defeated scholar ? For the scholar, 
the thinker, is not one who can apply his mind 
to that only to which it naturally turns, but 
is distinguished from the common herd of 
brain-bearing animals chiefly by his power of 
deriving, by forceful application from un- 
promising, stubborn, and unattractive subjects, 
some new knowledge and blessing for mankind. 

Hint Tenth, and last. — Persevere ; stick to 
your task till it is done. Suppose that the 
moon stood over New York harbor at this in- 
stant, pulling its waters toward herself. How 
long would it be before the pull would be felt 
and the waters rise in high tide? Even if all 
the continents were out of the way, it would 
be six hours. Full that table toward you. It 
does not stir instantly, but soon it does, though 
you pull no harder. What is happening dur- 
ing the moon's six hours or your instant of 
waiting ? Fower is overcoming inertia. Do 
you not know that there is inertia in mind as 
well as matter ? Do you not find that the 
true start in studying comes some time after 
you commence ? How foolish it would be for 
the moon, after six hours' pull, to let go and 



PUTTING ONE'S IIINB ON IT 101 

say that she will try again some other day ! 
Many a time we lose our grip just when the 
intellectual tide is ready to rise. Let us finish 
one thing at a time. 

But a rule that is good for all occasions, you 
know, is good for nothing. Exceptions prove 
the rule, and there is an exception to this. 
There is just a grain of truth in that absurd 
old proverb, "A watched pot never boils." 
Sometimes the best way to set our brains 
a-simmering over any particular fire is to go 
off and forget all about the matter for a sea- 
son. Too long thought on a problem dulls 
the mind, as a too prolonged gaze at any ob- 
ject dims the eyes. The wise student will 
learn the value of intervals. He will take 
lessons from the farmer in the rotation of 
crops. If his mind has become weary of 
raising a crop of figures, he will set it to 
raising a crop of history or of language. Un- 
less the mind rebels in this way, however, 
mental economy tells us to keep right on with 
the same task until it is completed. 

"And what are we to do with visitors," 
3^ou ask, " and with chatterers who interrupt, 
and with other people's purposes that spoil 
the best-laid plans of mice and men ? " Why, 
endure them without losing your temper. 
Nothing is a greater interruption to study 



102 HOW TO STUDY. 

than the loss of temper. Better for your 
studying that you lose an hour than lose your 
temper; better that your entire schedule be 
put out of order than you out of spirits. 
Make your plans with spaces between, so that 
when the hindrances and interferences come, 
they will simply shove your plans closer to- 
gether, and not crowd any of them out. 

And yet we are ourselves responsible for 
most of our interruptions. There are some peo- 
ple who are, to coin a word, very " interrupt- 
ible." They are like a gutter stream, whose 
flexible, meandering nature tempts every urchin 
to put in sticks to turn it out of its course. 
Other people are like floods of hot lava, and 
the fiery intensity of their purpose is felt and 
honored as soon as you draw near them. You 
do not feel any inclination to divert them from 
their course, or even to approach them, until 
they cool off. 




CHAPTER XIX. 

MEMORY-TEAINII^G. 

DO not at all regret a course in mem- 
ory-training I once took. To be sure, 
I have forgotten all about the course, 
except that it was great fun; but I 
got this good from it : I found out how not to 
develop the memory. I sum up my discoveries 
as follows : 

1. Do not rely on unnatural methods, or 
difficult methods, or artificial methods, of train- 
ing the memory. 

2. Do not get the idea that the only appro- 
priate field for the exercise of the memory is 
in recalling dates, names, and figures. 

3. l^ever fall into the error of supposing 
that you can learn to remember things me- 
chanically, without a personal interest in them. 

4. Do not treat the memory as a machine 
apart from yourself, that you can force to 
work quite regardless of your own general 
spiritual and mental and physical condition. 

5. Do not believe that any two men should 
train their memories in just the same way, any 

103 



104 HOW TO STUDY. 

more than they should train their bodies in 
precisely the same manner. 

6. Do not forget that even more necessary, 
often, than tenacious remembering is wise for- 
getting, — learning what trivialities to drop, in 
order that the essentials may be retained. 

Those are some of the things I have found 
out about how not to train the memory. On 
the other hand, theory and experience together 
have taught me a few things about the mem- 
ory that I have found useful, and you may like 
to have them set down before you in black 
and white. Here they are : 

1. The secret of memory is personal inter- 
est. You can't really pay attention to any 
matter without a personal interest in it, and so 
I may say that you can remember anything if 
your attention is really fixed upon it. 

2. Do something in connection with what 
you want to remember, and you have estab- 
lished a personal interest. That is why writ- 
ing down facts helps us to remember them. 
That is why we remember the names of people 
who meet us in the course of business so much 
more readily than the names of those who meet 
us in the course of social chat. 

3. You can best remember things that you 
like. One w^ay, then, to cultivate a memory 
for anything is to cultivate a liking for it. 



MEMOB Y- TEA INING. 105 

4. Anticipation is a great aid to memory. 
For instance, if you want to remember to take 
a book upstairs the next time you go, imagine 
yourself walking to the book, taking it, carry- 
ing it upstairs, and putting it in its place. 
When the time comes, you will be pretty sure 
to carry out your imaginations. It has be- 
come a sort of second nature to do it, be- 
cause you have done it once already, in your 
mind. 

5. Selection helps memory. Burden the 
memory as little as possible, — only with im- 
portant things, central things, around which 
other things will naturally cluster. Group 
facts. In studying the Civil War, for in- 
stance, all the events can be hinged on half-a- 
dozen nuclear dates. 

6. Combination aids the memory. Be 
shrewd in hitching things together ; the dates 
1776 A. D. and 776 b. c, for instance. 

7. Review helps the memory, for the same 
reason that anticipation helps it ; it puts us 
into closer personal relationship with the fact ; 
it gets us acquainted with it. 

8. You are almost certain to forget a thing 
if you think you are going to forget it. The 
orator who has confidence in himself and a 
good will-power remembers all his points, 
while the speaker who is distrustful of him- 



106 HOW TO STUDY. 

self forgets his opening sentence and leading 
argument. 

9. Another assistant to the memory is or- 
der. If you want facts to come readily to 
your hand, you must pack them away method- 
ically. Discursive reading, such as our news- 
papers and popular magazines furnish, is ruin- 
ous to the memory, if indulged in overmuch. 

Now, — to close with a practical illustration, 
— suppose you wanted to remember these nine 
points I have given ; how would you go about 
it ? You might summarize them thus : " in- 
tentness, action, liking, anticipation, selection, 
combination, review, distrust, order." Notic- 
ing that the first letters of these words, i, a, 1, 
a, s, c, r, d, and o, may be twisted into " a cord 
sail," you might try to remember these prin- 
ciples of memory by remembering " a cord 
sail." That would be an example of how not 
to do it. 

On the other hand, the sensible way would 
be to group your principles together thus : an- 
ticipation, review ; intentness, liking ; action, 
distrust ; selection, combination, order. A lit- 
tle thought over the reason for this oixler will 
make it almost impossible for you to forget it. 




CHAPTEE XX. 

COIJN" OF THE KEALM. 

OlSTCE was unlucky enough to have 
a sum deposited in a bank that 
" went under." My deposits did not 
go under with it, however, for it 
was announced that all depositors would 
eventually be paid, though they must wait 
some time and take their money in tedious 
dividends. My funds Avere in the bank, safe 
and sound ; but for all the good they did me 
and the rest of the world, they might as well 
have been in Demaraland. 

That is the way it is with the knowledge of 
a great many scholars. " I know it, but I 
cannot tell it," is the familiar phrase with 
which every teacher is all-too-well acquainted. 
"You never know what you cannot tell," 
I am always tempted to reply vigorously. 

" Oh, but I know it to myself," I have heard 
them answer, with Socratic air. 

"JSTo," I assert in disgust, "if you knew it 
to yourself, you could tell it to yourself, and 
if you could tell it to yourself, you could tell 
107 



108 HOW TO STUDY. 

it to some one else. You doubtless have a 
vague feeling of ownership of the knowledge. 
You are sure you once knew the fact, and you 
put it away where you could lay your hands on 
it. It is yours, therefore, even though you have 
forgotten just where you put it. That is the 
way you reason, for all the world like my 
bank deposit. I had it — the promise of it, and 
I suppose they taxed me on it ; but I could 
not pay my debts with it, and I could not buy 
anything with it ; and w^hen, by any test, I 
wanted to assure myself that I had it, I found 
I didnH have it. A fig for such ownership ! 
And a fig for the things you know but cannot 
tell ! " 

Do you think that is too harsh ? It is the 
way the world will talk after you leave school. 

" Have you ever noticed the resemblance 
between ^schylus and Dante ? " 

" ^s — M^ — ^^hj) yes, to be sure ; her — it — 
he — Latin poetry was always a — er, I mean 
Greek prose is — was — most delightful ; and if 
you compare it to Dante — why — er, yes, I 
should think it would." 

The world will not accept such a reply as 
evidence of scholarship any more than your 
old professor Avould, and though 3^ou may re- 
member all about ^schylus when you wake 
up that niglit, and even recall some of the 



COIN OF THE REALM. 109 

scenes of the Prometheus, yet nothing will 
make your friend believe that you ever were a 
classical scholar. JN^on-proclucible know^ledge 
is no knowledge, to all practical purposes of 
human intercourse, until it is put in the shape 
of coin of the realm. When your Latin and 
Greek, your astronomy, your political economy 
and history and English literature are legal 
tender, then, and not till then, will Cashier 
Common Sense, of the bank of Popular Ee- 
gard, honor your draft upon that conservative 
institution. " I have the funds, but I cannot 
show them to you now " — just try him with 
your time-worn excuse, if you want to hear 
sarcasm. 

And if — to bring the matter to a practical 
head — you want to hiow whether your knowl- 
edge is producible, produce it. Talk it out. 
A student is indeed fortunate if he has some 
one with whom he can talk over his lessons. 
The discussions I used to wage in the rooms 
of my fellow-students over all sorts of ques- 
tions — granted that they were very crude and 
sophomoric discussions, yet they served better 
than a thousand . examinations to fix the sub- 
jects in my mind. If I were to go back to 
college now, I think I should organize a Talk- 
ing Club — a society where no papers would 
be read and no business would be conducted, 



110 HOW TO STUDY. 

but the students would meet simply to con- 
verse about their lessons. It might be called 
a Socrates Club, in honor of the immortal old 
tonguester. And if I could not do this — as is 
most likely ; and if I could not find a friend 
who would think he had time for this seem- 
ingly barren palaver, why, I should play every 
day a sort of intellectual solitaire, and I and 
Myself would debate our studies together. I 
would doubt this point, and Myself would de- 
fine it ; I would question that statement, and 
Myself would join me in attacking it ; I would 
eulogize that truth, and Myself would proceed 
to illustrate it ; and so I would chatter Myself 
and Myself would chatter me into the wealth 
of learning that alone can fairly be called 
wealth of learning, — that is, coin of the realm. 




CHAPTER XXL 



AM enjoying a new contrivance of 
the electricians which is a genuine 
addition to the comfort of mankind. 
It is called the " ever-ready " elec- 
tric light, and I shall always owe a debt of 
gratitude to wide-awake Dr. William E. Bar- 
ton for introducing me to it. 

The little instrument is a black, nickle- 
mounted tube, about eight inches long. At 
one end is a lens, and as you press down a ring 
at the other end, there flashes from this lens 
a light brilliant enough to illuminate objects 
across a large room. When you cease to press 
the ring, the light disappears instantly. It is 
a dry-plate electric battery, which, with ordi- 
nary usage, has to be charged about four times 
a year. 

The uses to which we put this " ever- 
ready " are many, — for a " snatch -up "to go 
down cellar or explore some dark closet or re- 
mote corner of the attic ; to see the watch or 
the clock at night ; to note whether the baby 
111 



112 HOW TO STUDY. 

is covered up properly ; as a dark lantern in 
campaigns against possible burglars ; to jot 
down that idea for an essay which will come 
about 2:45 A. m. 

But I am not writing an advertisement of 
the " ever-ready," though I think that many 
of my readers will be glad to know about the 
useful little contrivance. My purpose is to 
use this flashlight as a symbol of a certain 
mental process that is very often, and very 
wrongly, treated with disdain. We call it 
"jumping at conclusions," "surface knowl- 
edge," "cursory information," — that is, in- 
formation obtained on the run. 

There is a use for this in the world, just as 
there is a use for my electric flashlight. It is 
not a student lamp, I know well. I would not 
think of sitting down with it to read McMas- 
ter's history of the United States, or even to 
write a letter ; but for the purpose of the mo- 
ment, it is just the thing, and having it at 
hand, it would be foolish to light my student 
lamp for the purpose of finding the toothache 
medicine. 

Yet there are people who insist on doing 
just that. Under the specious plea of thorough- 
ness, they will not write a literary society 
essay on Don Quixote until the}^ have read up 
on all Spanish literature ; they refuse to teach 



MY '' ever-ready:' 113 

that class of little boys whose teacher is unex- 
pectedly absent, because, although they know 
ten times as much about the lesson as any of 
the little boys, they have not had time to read 
Edersheim and Farrar and the last number of 
The Sunday-School Times ; they will not sing 
a simple song before an uncritical parlor com- 
pany, because they have not yet practiced it 
before Professor Longhairsky. So it is in 
everything ; they plead lack of preparation, 
lack of information, lack of time, and the 
world can get little out of them because they 
insist on a degree of thoroughness that is not 
often practicable. 

I believe in thoroughness ; of course I do. 
But there is thoroughness and thoroughness. 
It is purely a relative term. The question is 
only what degree of thoroughness is appro- 
priate to a given task. One need prepare 
more carefully for a book than for a magazine 
article, and more carefully for a magazine 
article than for a newspaper interview. What 
would be unacceptable in an academy picture 
is even charming in a sketch. What would 
justly be criticised in an oration or a sermon 
as loose and undigested, may be admirable and 
admired in rapid conversation. The question 
is purely one of adequacy to the place and the 
time. 



114 HOW TO STUDY. 

" But," it is argued by these over-thorough 
folks, " if we are thorough in everything, we 
shall cultivate the inestimable habit of thor- 
oughness." 

That is right ; he thorough in everything. 
But a carpenter is not in serious danger of be- 
coming careless if he refuses to put into the 
clapboarding of a house the same finish he 
would lavish on a rosewood cabinet, or if, 
after he has built the house, he chooses a 
more rough-and-ready mode of putting up the 
coal-bin. 




CHAPTER XXII. 

THE FIIsriSHING TOUCH. 

ND now, having said what I have said 
in the preceding chapter, namely, 
that one must exercise common sense 
in determining the degree of thor- 
oughness appropriate to a given task, I may 
go on to a far more important plea. 

There's a famous French maxim that tells 
us that it is the " first step that costs." It is 
a pity that the proverb does not finish the 
thought and add, " It is the last step that 
pays." The tedious and diificult first steps, — 
in how many things we take them, paying a 
big price in money, time and toil ; and in how 
few of these many things do we have patience 
and constancy suificient to finish the last and 
easier part of the course, and receive the pay ! 
He was a thoughtful man as well as a great 
artist who made the remark that after the 
statue is finished the work is but begun. He 
understood the inestimable value of the care- 
ful finishing touch, which completes in reality 
what the careless observer thought already 

115 



116 HOW TO STUDY. 

perfect. In making castings the metal must 
remain in the furnace a certain due length of 
time before it runs out, or the entire operation 
is a failure, and the entire mass of metal lost. 
An impatient hand on the lever, a too careless 
haste to complete the job, would waste much 
money and time. 

]S"ow it is amazing to note how much time, 
energy and money are lost to this world just 
for the lack of the last step, the last few min- 
utes, the last finishing touches. 

Here is Master Takeiteasy, the student. The 
facts of his lessons are pressed into his mind 
just hard enough so that they stick till the 
recitation is over, or possibly till the morrow's 
review ; and then they fall off like the leaves 
of autumn. He studies his lesson until he has 
gone over the required ground, and then turns 
directly to some other work. And Master 
Takeiteasy might have been playing leap-frog 
as profitably as studying, because his work 
cannot be permanent in its results without re- 
view. Study for an hour. Eeview that study 
for ten minutes. Keview that review for five 
minutes, and you will have gained something. 
The luckless student who studies without im- 
mediate and persistent review, is like the man 
who made all the payments on his life insur- 
ance policy but the last, and so lost the whole. 



THE FINISHING TOUCH. 117 

It is passing strange that students will day 
after day spend their time taking these first 
steps, costly and tedious, without a moment's 
thought of the last steps which make the goal 
their own. I beseech you, the next time a 
lesson is on the coals, remember the man at 
the furnace, and do not press the lever for a 
casting — a casting of the book aside, you un- 
derstand ! — until you have carried the process 
beyond the possibility of loss. 

Then how many books we read, straightway 
to forget, thus all but wasting the time we 
spent upon them ! We have not given to our 
reading the last payment, the hour or two of 
thought, of review, possibly of extracts and 
note-taking, which would have transformed 
the work of many hours into permanent re- 
sults. So it is with many studies. Suppose 
that you have gained, with pains, a smatter- 
ing of Latin. The first steps have been diffi- 
cult, the work tedious, and O, how many cry 
halt on Latin just as Latin scholarship is within 
their grasp, with all its inestimable advantages 
and pleasures ! It is very much as if a small 
boy should see a fine apple on a distant limb. 
He climbs the tree painfully. The trunk is 
awkward. The limbs are roughly barked, and 
SAvay unsteadily ; nevertheless, the apple is at 
last within reach of his hand. But the mem- 



118 HOW TO STUDY, 

ory of the toilsome ascent is too much for 
him. No fruit can be worth anything that is 
so hard to get. So the small boy drops dis- 
gusted to the ground without the apple. You 
say you believe that this is a slander on the 
small boy ? It is a slander. It is only an 
illustration of the way some big boys of my 
acquaintance — and girls too — have climbed the 
tree of science after the apple of knowledge. 

Are not examples of this mistake to be found 
at every meeting of your literary societies? 
You know what is meant by a " finished " style, 
a *' polished " style. How many of you, after 
you have written your essays, proceed to finish 
them, to polish them ? A cultivated writer is 
known not merely by his thoughts, but by a 
certain elegance of diction and ease of literary 
manner. This grace is to be obtained only by 
the nicest revision, by scrupulous watch over 
adjectives and verbs, subjects and objects, met- 
aphors and similes, by fastidious rearrange- 
ment of awkward sentences, and even by anx- 
ious attention to all details of punctuation, 
capitalization, spelling, and paragraphing. Be 
the thoughts equally good, before this process 
it was but a schoolboy composition. Now it 
is literature. Here as elsewhere it's the first 
step that costs, it's the last step that pays. 

You can apply the principle in a hundred 



THE FINISHING TOUCH. 119 

directions. I must speak of one that has a 
more direct connection with your studying 
than you may think at first. Here is a young 
man who has an interest in religious matters. 
That is, he reads the controversial articles in 
The Forii'in or North Ainerican Review^ he 
hears a sermon Sunday, possibly belongs to a 
Sunday-school class in a sort of feeble manner, 
and listens respectfully while others talk and 
pray at prayer meeting. He calls himself a 
Christian, and yet — and yet 

Have you ever seen carpenters drive nails 
where a great strain is to come, and do you 
know how they sometimes put the matter be- 
yond doubt ? They clinch the nails. I think 
that it would be a tremendously good thing 
for almost everybody's religion, to clinch the 
hearing of preacher and Sunday-school teacher 
by earnest study of one's own Bible and ear- 
nest praying in one's own closet ; to clinch the 
prayer meeting by adding one's own little 
mite of endeavor ; to clinch the articles in The 
Forum or North American Review by a vast 
deal of vigorous, practical, all-alive Christian- 
ity, — Christianity not on paper, or daubed 
with printer's ink, but written in warm scarlet 
on the grateful heart-tablets of our brothers 
and sisters who need us. 

Let us resolve in our school work to live 



120 HOW TO STUDY. 

completer lives ; to begin fewer things if need 
be, but to finish more and better things ; to 
be more patient and determined ; that the 
Master may say of our work, some happy day 
to come, " Well done, thou good and faithful 
servant ! " . 



CHAPTEE XXIII. 

THE CLUE IN THE LABYRINTH. 




HA YE been indulging lately in the 
exhilarating sport of bowling, and 
though I cannot yet get much above 
one hundred by the end of the 
" string," yet I have learned a thing or two 
about the manly game which I am very glad 
to know. 

One of these important discoveries of mine 
is this : that in rolling a ball at the pins, direc- 
tion is of far more importance than velocity. 
Dr. X was bowling with me the other night. 
He had the rheumatism in his feet, and could 
scarcely hobble. He had to stand still and 
roll his balls. They ambled gently dow^n the 
alley, sounding like a leisurely freight train, 
but they went straight for the middle pin, and 
generally the whole set of them went tumbling 
head over heels. 

On the next alley, young Michael Muscle 
was bowling, and I watched him with envy. 
He would give a swift run, and with graceful 
delivery would fire a ball down the shining 

121 



122 HOW TO STUDY. 

boards as if from a nine-inch gun. But his 
balls were actually too swift. They were 
often " thin " ; that is, they would flash their 
way clean through the pins, disturbing only a 
few of them, just as a bullet will make a smooth, 
round hole in a windowpane, while a stone 
thrown by an urchin will smash it to frag- 
ments. 

It all set me to thinking about the slow, 
steady, easy-going boys I have known, who 
have made no fuss and won no particular ap- 
plause ; but they have known just what they 
wanted to accomplish, and just how it was 
to be done, and now quite without exception 
they are university professors, or heads of 
mercantile establishments, or Congressmen, or 
at the top of some other heap. In the mean- 
time, in many a case the youngster who made 
a great stir in school and college, who sparkled 
and shone, who carried off all the prizes and 
beat all the games and held all the positions 
of honor, settled down into a very subordinate 
position, or slipped out of sight altogether. It 
was because these fellows lacked a clear, def- 
inite, steady aim. They plunged through their 
work for the moment, but they had no thouglit 
beyond the moment. They were rockets, bril- 
liant and beautiful; they came down — sticks. 
I shall think of all this the next time I am 



THE CLUE IN THE LABYRINTH. 123 

fortunate enough to have a touch of rheuma- 
tism, and I sliall go to the bowling-alley, and 
I shall make the record of the evening. 

I don't blame the students in our high schools 
and colleges for growing perplexed and con- 
founded with the multitude of studies they 
must cram into their heads. The Latin clashes 
with the French, and the Greek with the Ger- 
man, trigonometry bumps up against Ameri- 
can history, and geology smashes psychology. 
By the time they are through with it all, poor 
things, it is a wonder that they know whether 
the binomial theorem is in the major premise 
or the Silurian age. In the course of my peda- 
gogical experience I have had to teach pretty 
much everything, from Greek to arithmetic, 
from astronomy to shorthand, from zoology 
and geology to French and algebra and modern 
history. That is why I speak so feelingly 
about the brain-packing required nowadays 
from teacher and scholar. 

I want to tell you a little story. 

Once I had in one of my classes — it chanced 
to be a class in higher astronomy — a young man 
who saw no sense in the study. He did not 
like it a bit. The strange secrets of the stars, 
the mysteries of the moon, the fascination of 
the spectrum, the tricks of the sun-spots, the 
beauty of the planets' ordered march, — all 



124 HO IV TO STUDY. 

these were lost upon him. He was a very 
practical young man, and it was too far away 
from earth for him. So he failed on exami- 
nation, as I knew he would, and I had to give 
him extra work to do in the summer. 

Well, the 3'oung man somehow took it into 
his head during that summer's study to hitch 
his astronomy on to his life work ; he was in- 
tending to study law. With every chapter he 
asked himself, ^' How could I use this to illus- 
trate a case ? What turn could I make upon 
that fact before a jury?" As soon as this 
idea entered his head, his studies made prodi- 
gious strides, he speedily passed with credit, 
and he wrote on the back of his last examina- 
tion-paper, " This is the most interesting study 
I ever took up." I have that paper yet. 

You remember how Ariadne piloted Theseus 
through the Cretan labyrinth with her mystic 
thread. Well, this thought which my astro- 
nomical student hit upon is the clue that will 
bring you safely to the heart even of our 
modern educational maze, enable you to kill 
the minotaur and get safely out again, and 
laugh at Minos. I have slight sympathy with 
the views of those who advise young men to 
]iostpone as long as possible their choice of a 
life work. " Wait," they say, " till you have 
gone through college and viewed the world of 



THE CLUE IN THE LABYRINTH. 125 

knowledge from all sides. You cannot wisely 
choose your calling before that, for you do 
not before that know either the world or your- 
self." Fortunate, indeed, would be the col- 
lege senior that knew either the world or him- 
self ! If the sixteen years before college have 
not shown him something he would like to do, 
there is small chance that the four years of 
college will do that for him. 

I am foolish enough to believe that God 
calls men and women to be farmers and musi- 
cians and doctors and editors and milliners as 
well as to be ministers and missionaries ; that 
from the very start he began to fit them for 
their life work, and that it is possible for a 
wise parent and wise teacher, and above all 
for the wise youngster himself, to discover 
what God put him in the world for. To that 
centre all his interests should turn. Upon 
that he should hang all his studies. That will 
give his school life a significance it otherwise 
could not possibly gain. That will make his 
attention sharp, his memory tenacious, his 
perseverance virile. That will lead him to the 
bull, and take the bull by the horns, and win 
him the triumph. 

I have seen young men not a few, who, mis- 
led by foolish theorists, postponed their life 
decisions as long as possible, dilly-dallied with 



126 HOW TO STUDY. 

all their studies, guessed their way through 
college, adopted a new profession or business 
every month of their senior year, took up at 
last, in sheer inability to choose, some prepos- 
terous calling selected for them by their par- 
ents, and went straight to the limbo of the in- 
competent. The course I advise may lead to 
mistakes, but the other course is sure to, and 
the mistakes that result from a bold front and 
a prompt and manly choice are the most easily 
remedied of mistakes. Your experience may 
be like mine. With an innate longing for 
literary work, I spent my school and college 
days, so far as I could, in scribbling, and 
speared upon a steel pen everything I learned. 
Well, for nine years after I left college I had 
to teach. No editor's office seemed to be 
vacant. But behold, at the end of the ninth 
year I was popped right into the most delight- 
ful editorial chair in all the Avorld, and every- 
thing I had crammed into my head while 
I was teaching was pulled out again by my 
printer's devil in three months, and I wished 
it was ten times as much. That is the way it 
will be with you. Choose your calling, pre- 
pare for it, take the first honest work that 
offers itself, and — bide your time. 



I 




CHAPTEE XXIY. 

WHY AEE YOU STUDYII^G ? 

T is not enough to know how to study ; 
that we have been trying to learn. 
Nor to know what to study — the 
subject treated in the last chapter. 
But we must also know why we study ; and 
the purpose must be an adequate one, or the 
study will be poor study and finally no study 
at all. 

The "why," too, must come before the 
"how." Unless you have the right impulsion 
toward study, you are certain not to study in 
the right way. Why, then, do I make this 
the last rather than the first chapter of this 
book ? Because the truths I shall here express 
are so important that I want them to leave 
the final impression on your mind. 

What is the good of a goal ? Usually it is 
nothing that can be carried away. It is 
nothing to eat, or wear, or exhibit in the par- 
lor. It is a rude stone pillar, or a wooden 
post, or sometimes only a hole in the ground. 
Yet the goal is the cynosure of every race, the 

127 



128 HOW TO STUDY. 

life of every contest, the inspiration of every 
game, and, taken broadly throughout life, it is 
the incentive to every achievement worthy the 
name. A man without a goal — that is, a man 
without a clearly seen, definite, single end to- 
ward which all his energies are directed and 
upon which his longings centre, may have all 
possible aids to success except that one aid, 
may have good birth, brains, influence, money, 
address, ambition ; but he can never have suc- 
cess. You may have seen some unfortunate 
man whose nerves and muscles flew in all di- 
rections without his control, hands, arms, legs, 
head twitching and jerking around, each as if 
it belonged to a different man. It is because 
something is lacking or wrong with an inch or 
two of corrugations in the brain where lies the 
co-ordinating power, the power that unifies the 
nerves and muscles and focuses this Avonderful 
body of ours upon single movements and deeds. 
A life without a goal is a life w^ith the rickets. 

So necessary is. this aim to any success, even 
to the initial successes, that I should like to 
have it recognized in the entrance examina- 
tions at every college. The president himself 
should conduct this examination. 

" Why are you going to study, you man 
with the bicycle face and the baseball fingers 
and the football hair ? " 



WHY ABE YOU STUDYING? 129 

"I shall study, sir" — for in some way 
honesty is to be made compulsory in this ex- 
amination — " in order to get an opportunity 
to play." 

'' Why will you study, you youngster with 
the Demosthenic brow, the Napoleonic nose, 
the Washingtonian chin, and the Paderewski 
hair ? " 

"Because, sir, I want to be great. I have 
in me, sir, the making of a distinguished poet, 
or inventor, or general, or musician. I have 
not yet decided which." 

"And why are you studying, you pale- 
faced, blear-eyed, stoop-shouldered, bookworm 
fellow?" 

" Because I have insatiable curiosity. I want 
to know things. I like to dig into mysteries. 
I am passionately fond of books, sir. Why, 
sir, I'd rather read a book than do any- 
thing." 

" You look it. And why are you here, my 
jolly boy, you good-natured chap ? " 

" Oh, because it is the thing to do, you 
know. It is what is expected of me. My 
parents sent me, and my friends want me to 
study, and all the other fellows are in college, 
so here I am." 

"And now you, my earnest-eyed, bright- 
faced lad? I can see that you have good 



130 HOW TO STUDY. 

stuff in you. What is your purpose in the 
student life ? " 

But the answer of the true scholar must be 
deferred for a minute. 

For, first, I want to say with regard to all 
the false motives I have indicated, and others 
that might have been named, that no purpose 
in study is the true one unless it can stand the 
test of eternity. This is the case Avith every 
act of our lives, so of course it is the case with 
an act so important as the undertaking of a 
college course, or a course in any school. And 
before the test of eternity how pitiful all these 
motives are ! After a few brief years of iphjs- 
ical vigor paralyzed by an empty head, the 
athlete sees his muscles themselves becoming 
flabby with age, and finally some day slipping 
off from him, together with the rest of his out- 
grown body. A mere flash of time, and the 
bookworm finds himself in the country where 
all earth's clumsy languages are quite forgot- 
ten, where the most abstruse science lies open 
to the eye of any child, where all the history of 
earth's sad wars and feeble dynasties is gladly 
lost in the history of heaven. Only an eddy- 
ing whirl in the current of time, and the studies 
which served as stepping-stones to the attain- 
ment of some lofty ambition are quite forgot- 
ten, like all other stepping-stones, the ambition 



WEF ABE YOU STUDYING? 131 

being attained; and only another eddy, and 
the ambition itself is swallowed up in the 
black wave of death. 

Young Pliable's case is the commonest, and 
the world is full of these fortuitous students 
who study because of a force from without — 
the force of their parents' desire, or the mere 
push of others' opinion — and not from a force 
within, and so graduate into lives that have 
no permanent mental interests or resources, 
utterly at the mercy, if it is a girl, of a luckless 
love-affair and a dull or selfish husband, or, 
if it is a boy, utterly at the mercy of busi- 
ness fortune. They have built up for them- 
selves no bright refuge in books against the 
dark days, the days of sickness, of loneliness, 
of sorrow and loss. Such lives have " no root 
in themselves," and how speedily they wither 
away ! 

But there is one purpose in studying, and 
only one, which is adequate, pow^erful, eternal. 
It is to get into harmony with God. 

]^ow you think that I am preaching. That 
may be, but it is very practical preaching, I as- 
sure you. Keeley, that scatter-brained, tricky 
inventor, with his motor that never would 
"mote," was nevertheless in the right with 
his main contention that in the little-under- 
stood laws of harmony lies the key to the 



132 HOW TO STUDY. 

secrets of the universe, that all power is 
wrapped up in them, and all possibilities of 
progress. The magic of sympathetic vibra- 
tions upon which he based his alleged dis- 
coveries still remains a mystery so far as its 
practical application is concerned, but whether 
those laws shall yet lend us their mighty aid 
for the propulsion of this world's machinery, 
still they are the recognized source of efficiency 
in all things higher. The machine itself must 
be in harmony with the mind of the inventor, 
or it will not work. The instruments of the 
orchestra must be in tune with one another, 
and all must be obedient to the baton of the 
director, or there is no music. The army must 
move as a single man at the will of the gen- 
eral, or there is no victory. And in the same 
way and for the same reason the student's 
chief end is to get into harmony with his 
Creator. 

All knowledge falls into line subordinate to 
this high purpose. To get in harmony with 
God, we must know about God, — that is the- 
ology, which every student should in some 
form study ; and about his works, that is 
science ; about ourselves, that is history and 
psychology and logic ; and about the work 
God has set us to do in the world, that is 
technical training. This purpose meets the 



WJSr ARE YOU STUDYING? 133 

test of eternity, because if we study to get in 
harmony with God, we shall discover beneath 
all the temporary elements of our studies a 
science that lasts forever. The stars may fade, 
but space endures; the earth may crumble, 
but geologic time runs on ; plants and animals 
may pass away, but God has proved himself 
to be a lover of creation infinite in marvelous 
surprises, and whoever comes close to His 
mind in this beautiful specimen world will 
not be far from it in any world. 

E'or does this overmastering purpose to get 
in harmony with God exclude the lower aims 
of the student whenever they are worthy, 
such as interest in science for the mere sake of 
knowing, or to prepare one for a business 
career. I^ot at all. Rather does, it strengthen 
and deepen all such interests, adding to all 
that is legitimate in them the intensity of a 
heaven-descended momentum, while the sense 
of eternal proportion we gain keeps us from 
that one-sided view into which students so 
easily fall, and prevents us from ^'running 
anything into the ground," devoting our lives 
to the dative case, or being swallowed up by 
some tumble-bug. No one can live long in 
harmony with this purpose without coming to 
see that there is nothing ennobling in facts 
any more than in pig iron ; that the one de- 



134 HOW TO STUDY. 

cisive question is the use that is to be made of 
the facts. 

To learn God's will, and then to do it ! That 
ultimate aim of the student includes within it 
everything that has been said in this book 
about the methods of wise studying. It bars 
out all forms of cheating and insincerity. It 
keeps the student's body pure and strong and 
free from all hindering excesses. It frees one 
from crippling slavery to per cents. It pro- 
motes attention and enforces concentration of 
mind. Pallid ambition, with its boastful strut 
or its trembling fear of failure, is displaced by 
a serene confidence that walks hand in hand 
with the one great Teacher of men and angels, 
in whose j^resence comes that calm evenness 
of temper which is for the scholar at the same 
time a priceless delight and an achieving 
poAver. 

Once there was a great painter who had 
three pupils. The first spent all tlie time in 
the studio at his easel. He copied incessantly 
the great master's pictures, studying deeply 
into their beauties, and trying to imitate them 
with his own brush. He was up early, and 
was the last to leave the workroom at night. 
He would have nothing to do with the master 
himself, attended none of his lectures, never 
went to him with any question, nor spent any 



WHF ABE YOU STUDYING f 135 

time in talking with him. He wanted to be 
his own director, and hit upon his own discov- 
eries, and be self-made. This pupil lived and 
died without notice, and never expressed on 
canvas a single one of the noble characteristics 
of his master. 

The second pupil, on the contrary, spent lit- 
tle time in the studio, scarcely soiled his palette, 
or wore out a brush. He attended every lecture 
on art, was constantly asking questions about 
the theories of perspective, of coloring, of light 
and shade, of grouping figures, and all that, 
and was a zealous student of books. But for 
all his study, he died without producing a 
single worthy picture to help and delight 
mankind and perpetuate his master's glory. 

The third was as zealous in the practical 
work of the artist as the first, and as zealous 
in the theoretical as the second, but he did 
one thing which they never thought of doing : 
he came to know and love the master. They 
were mucli together, the young artist and the 
older one, and they had long talks about all 
phases of an artist's life and work. So close 
and continual, in fact, was their communion, 
that they grew to talk alike, and think alil^e, 
and even, some said, to looli alike. And it 
was not long before they began to paint alike, 
and on the canvas of the younger glowed the 



136 HOW TO STUDY, 

same beauty and the same majesty that shone 
from the canvas of his master. 

And oh, my students, who have come with 
me to the last page of this little book, doubt- 
less you have some purpose in your studying, 
or you would not care to be reading this book 
at all ; but which of these three purposes is 
it ? Do the practical ends of life absorb you ? 
Are you engrossed in books, in the vague ab- 
stractions of theory ? Or, without omitting 
from your lives whatever is noble in these, 
have you chosen the better part, the higher 
purpose which shall never be- taken from you ? 



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